Electromagnetic duality anomaly in curved spacetimes Articles uri icon

publication date

  • March 2017

start page

  • 1

end page

  • 5

volume

  • 118

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0031-9007

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1079-7114

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.

subjects

  • Mathematics
  • Physics

keywords

  • anomalies; quantum fields in curved spacetime