2025/09/17 by Hutomo, Jessica, Lechner, Kurt, Sorokin, Dmitri P. · 3 citations
#FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2509.14351
We consider properties of non-linear theories of a chiral 4-form gauge field A4 in ten space-time dimensions with an emphasis on a subclass of these theories which are invariant under the D = 10 conformal symmetry. We show that general results regarding a peculiar structure of duality-invariant abelian gauge theories in four and six space-time dimensions do not extend to non-linear chiral 4-form theories in ten dimensions. This discrepancy arises primarily from the large number 81 of independent invariants constructible from the self-dual part of the five-form field strength F5=dA4 in D=10, in stark contrast to the single independent (fourth-order) invariants which are building blocks of the actions in the lower dimensional cases. In particular, unlike the D=4 and D=6 cases, where non-linear duality-invariant theories can be viewed as stress-tensor (T T-like) deformations of seed theories, the flow equations in D=10 generally involve both stress-tensor invariants and additional higher-order structures constructed from F5. In passing, we prove the equivalence of three Lagrangian formulations of non-linear duality-invariant p-form theories: the PST, the Ivanov-Nurmagambetov-Zupnik and the ``clone" one.