A note on electric-magnetic duality and soft charges

Abstract

Abstract We derive the asymptotic symmetries of the manifestly duality invariant formulation of electromagnetism in Minkoswki space. We show that the action is invariant under two algebras of angle-dependent u(1) transformations, one electric and the other magnetic. As in the standard electric formulation, Lorentz invariance requires the addition of additional boundary degrees of freedom at infinity, found here to be of both electric and magnetic types. A notable feature of this duality symmetric formulation, which we comment upon, is that the on-shell values of the zero modes of the gauge generators are equal to only half of the electric and magnetic fluxes (the other half is brought in by Dirac- string type contributions). Another notable feature is the absence of central extension in the angle-dependent u(1)2-algebra.

Keywords

• Gauge Symmetry
• Global Symmetries