Electromagnetic Duality Anomaly in Curved Spacetimes

Ivan Agullo, Adrian del Rio, and Jose Navarro-Salas
Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 111301 – Published 15 March 2017

Abstract

The source-free Maxwell action is invariant under electric-magnetic duality rotations in arbitrary spacetimes. This leads to a conserved classical Noether charge. We show that this conservation law is broken at the quantum level in the presence of a background classical gravitational field with a nontrivial Chern-Pontryagin invariant, in parallel with the chiral anomaly for massless Dirac fermions. Among the physical consequences, the net polarization of the quantum electromagnetic field is not conserved.

  • Received 3 August 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.111301

© 2017 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

General Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Ivan Agullo1,*, Adrian del Rio2,1,†, and Jose Navarro-Salas2,‡

  • 1Department of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803-4001, USA
  • 2Departamento de Fisica Teorica and IFIC, Centro Mixto Universidad de Valencia-CSIC. Facultad de Fisica, Universidad de Valencia, Burjassot-46100, Valencia, Spain

  • *agullo@lsu.edu
  • adrian.rio@uv.es
  • jnavarro@ific.uv.es

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Issue

Vol. 118, Iss. 11 — 17 March 2017

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