Imperial College London
Alternate

Professor Chris Hull FRS

Faculty of Natural Sciences, Department of Physics

Chair in Theoretical Physics
 
 
 
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Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7867c.hull Website

 
 
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Assistant

 

Mrs Graziela De Nadai-Sowrey +44 (0)20 7594 7843

 
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Location

 

602AHuxley BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

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Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Hull:2024:10.1007/JHEP04(2024)011,
author = {Hull, CM},
doi = {10.1007/JHEP04(2024)011},
journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics},
title = {Covariant action for self-dual p-form gauge fields in general spacetimes},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2024)011},
volume = {2024},
year = {2024}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Sen’s action for a p-form gauge field with self-dual field strength coupled to a spacetime metric g involves an explicit Minkowski metric and the presence of this raises questions as to whether the action is coordinate independent and whether it can be used on a general spacetime manifold. A natural generalisation of Sen’s action is presented in which the Minkowski metric is replaced by a second metric on spacetime. The theory is covariant and can be formulated on any spacetime. The theory describes a physical sector, consisting of the chiral p-form gauge field coupled to the dynamical metric g, plus a shadow sector consisting of a second chiral p-form and the second metric. The fields in this shadow sector only couple to each other and have no interactions with the physical sector, so that they decouple from the physical sector. The resulting theory is covariant and can be formulated on any spacetime. Explicit expressions are found for the interactions and extensions to include interactions with other physical fields or higher-derivative field equations are given. A spacetime with two metrics has some interesting geometry and some of this is explored here and used in the construction of the interactions. The action has two diffeomorphism-like symmetries, one acting only on the physical sector and one acting only on the shadow sector, with the spacetime diffeomorphism symmetry arising as the diagonal subgroup. This allows a further generalisation in which is not a tensor field but is instead a gauge field whose transition functions involve the usual coordinate transformation together with a shadow sector gauge transformation.
AU  - Hull,CM
DO  - 10.1007/JHEP04(2024)011
PY  - 2024///
TI  - Covariant action for self-dual p-form gauge fields in general spacetimes
T2  - Journal of High Energy Physics
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/JHEP04(2024)011
VL  - 2024
ER  -
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