Higher-form symmetries and 3-group in axion electrodynamics

2020/06/30 by Yoshimasa Hidaka, Muneto Nitta, Ryo Yokokura · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Axion #Dark Matter and Cosmic Phenomena #Dark matter #Group (periodic table) #Homogeneous space #Mathematical physics #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Theoretical physics #cond-mat.str-el #hep-ph #hep-th

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.physletb.2020.135672

published as Phys. Lett. B 808 (2020) 135672 · 9 pages, 4 figures; v2: minor revisions, references added; v3: minor revisions, published version with more references

openalex publication_date 2020/08/04 · arxiv created 2020/08/17 · arxiv updated 2020/08/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We study higher-form symmetries in a low-energy effective theory of a massless axion coupled with a photon in (3+1) dimensions. It is shown that the higher-form symmetries of this system are accompanied by a semistrict 3-group (2-crossed module) structure, which can be found by the correlation functions of symmetry generators of the higher-form symmetries. We argue that the Witten effect and anomalous Hall effect in the axion electrodynamics can be described in terms of 3-group transformations.

Citations

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Cited by

• Global 4-group symmetry and 't Hooft anomalies in topological axion electrodynamics