2024/11/18 by Adrián del Río, del Rio, Adrian
Chemistry · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.11792
openalex publication_date 2024/11/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is known that an electric-magnetic duality transformation is a symmetry of the classical source-free Maxwell theory in generic spacetimes. This provides a conserved Noether charge, physically related to the polarization state of the electromagnetic field. We argue that this conservation law fails to hold at the quantum level in presence of a background classical gravitational field with non-trivial dynamics, as determined by the Chern-Pontryagin scalar. This is the spin 1 analog of the chiral anomaly for massless Dirac fermions.