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Abstract In our previous article Phys. Rev. Lett. 127 (2021) 271601, we announced a novel ‘democratic’ Lagrangian formulation of general nonlinear electrodynamics in four dimensions that features electric and magnetic potentials on equal footing. Here, we give an expanded and more detailed account of this new formalism, and then proceed to push it significantly further by building the corresponding Lagrangian theories of higher form field interactions in arbitrary dimensions. Special attention is given to interactions of chiral 2k-forms in 4k + 2 dimensions, with further details for 2-forms in 6 dimensions and 4-forms in 10 dimensions. We comment more broadly on the structure of covariant equations of motion for chiral fields, and on the place of our Lagrangian theories in this context. The Lagrangian theories we develop are simple and explicit, and cover a much broader class of interactions than all past attempts in the literature.

In this review paper, we discuss the relation between recent advances in the theory of partial differential equations and their applications to quantum field theory on curved spacetimes. In particular, we focus on hyperbolic propagators and the role they play in the construction of physically admissible quantum states—the so-called Hadamard states—on globally hyperbolic spacetimes. We will review the notion of a propagator and discuss how it can be constructed in an explicit and invariant fashion, first on a Riemannian manifold and then on a Lorentzian spacetime. Finally, we will recall the notion of Hadamard state and relate the latter to hyperbolic propagators via the wavefront set, a subset of the cotangent bundle capturing the information about the singularities of a distribution.

We introduce and study in a general setting the concept of homogeneity of an operator and, in particular, the notion of homogeneity of an integral operator. In the latter case, homogeneous kernels of such operators are also studied. The concept of homogeneity is associated with transformations of a measure—measure dilations, which are most natural in the context of our general research scheme. For the study of integral operators, the notions of weak and strong homogeneity of the kernel are introduced. The weak case is proved to generate a homogeneous operator in the sense of our definition, while the stronger condition corresponds to the most relevant specific examples—classes of homogeneous integral operators on various metric spaces—and allows us to obtain an explicit general form for the kernels of such operators. The examples given in the article—various specific cases—illustrate general statements and results given in the paper and at the same time are of interest in their own way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study solutions in non-linear electrodynamics (NED) and establish several general results. We show, that the SO(2) electric-magnetic duality symmetry is restrictive enough to allow for reconstruction of the NED Lagrangian from the spherically-symmetric electrostatic (Coulomb-like) solution — although there are infinitely many different NED theories admitting a given solution, there exists a unique SO(2) invariant one among them under a simple analyticity assumption (that leaves out some interesting physical theories). We introduce a general algorithm for constructing new SO(2) invariant NED theories in the conventional approach, where only a few examples are available. We also show how to derive the Lagrangian of the SO(2) invariant theory admitting a given electrostatic solution. We further show on a simple example that some NED theories may require sources (particles) of finite (non-zero) size. Such a non-zero size source not only regularizes the infinite energy of the point charge but also satisfies the condition of regularity, that the electric field is zero at the origin. The latter condition was identified earlier as necessary and sufficient for the NED solution to generate a regular black hole via so-called double copy construction and is also satisfied by solitons. We propose a large class of solitonic NED solutions that give rise to regular black holes via double copy construction and contain solutions of Maxwell and Born-Infeld as different limits. This class of NED solutions acquires two new properties in the limit where the corresponding regular black hole's asymptotics becomes Minkowski: it gives rise to regular higher-spin black holes via generalization of double copy — "higher-copy" construction, and for very short distances changes the sign of the force becoming repulsive/attractive for opposite/similar signs of charges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An almost Abelian Lie algebra is a non-Abelian Lie algebra with a codimension 1 Abelian ideal. Most 3-dimensional real Lie algebras are almost Abelian, and they appear in every branch of physics that deals with anisotropic media — cosmology, crystallography, etc. In differential geometry and theoretical physics, almost Abelian Lie groups have given rise to some of the simplest solvmanifolds on which various geometric structures such as symplectic, Kähler, spin, etc., are currently studied in explicit terms. However, a systematic study of almost Abelian Lie groups and algebras from mathematics perspective has not been carried out yet, and this paper is the first step in addressing this wide and diverse class of groups and algebras. This paper studies the structure and important algebraic properties of almost Abelian Lie algebras of arbitrary dimension over any field of scalars. A classification of almost Abelian Lie algebras is given. All Lie subalgebras and ideals, automorphisms and derivations, Lie orthogonal operators and quadratic Casimir elements are described exactly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a separable finite diffuse measure space M and an orthonormal basis { φ n } of L 2 (M) consisting of bounded functions φ n ∈ L ∞ (M) , we find a measurable subset E ⊂ M of arbitrarily small complement | M \ E | < ϵ , such that every measurable function f ∈ L 1 (M) has an approximant g ∈ L 1 (M) with g = f on E and the Fourier series of g converges to g, and a few further properties. The subset E is universal in the sense that it does not depend on the function f to be approximated. Further in the paper this result is adapted to the case of M = G / H being a homogeneous space of an infinite compact second countable Hausdorff group. As a useful illustration the case of n-spheres with spherical harmonics is discussed. The construction of the subset E and approximant g is sketched briefly at the end of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct a Lorentz and generally covariant, polynomial action for free chiral p-forms, classically equivalent to the Pasti-Sorokin-Tonin (PST) formulation. The minimal set up requires introducing an auxiliary p-form on top of the physical gauge p-form and the PST scalar. The action enjoys multiple duality symmetries, including those that exchange the roles of physical and auxiliary p-form fields. Same type of actions are available for duality-symmetric formulations, which is demonstrated on the example of electromagnetic field in four dimensions. There, the degrees of freedom of a single Maxwell field are described employing four distinct vector gauge fields and a scalar field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We work on a parallelizable time-orientable Lorentzian 4-manifold and prove that in this case, the notion of spin structure can be equivalently defined in a purely analytic fashion. Our analytic definition relies on the use of the concept of a nondegenerate two-by-two formally self-adjoint first order linear differential operator and gauge transformations of such operators. We also give an analytic definition of spin structure for the 3-dimensional Riemannian case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We construct states on the algebra of the Klein–Gordon field that minimize the energy density in homogeneous and in inhomogeneous spacetimes, both with compact Cauchy hypersurfaces. The energy density is measured by geodesic observers and smeared over a spacelike slab of spacetime, entirely containing a Cauchy hypersurface and extended in time. We further show that these states are Hadamard states. The present construction generalizes the construction of states of low energy in Robertson–Walker spacetimes presented by Olbermann (2007 Class. Quantum Grav.24 5011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we collect Paley-Wiener-type results for the scalar field in Friedman-Robertson-Walker spacetimes. These are then used to fulfill the functional analytical assumptions which the previously developed unified mode decomposition method is based upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this review paper, we discuss the relation between recent advances in the theory of partial differential equations and their applications to quantum field theory on curved spacetimes. In particular, we focus on hyperbolic propagators and the role they play in the construction of physically admissible quantum states—the so-called Hadamard states—on globally hyperbolic spacetimes. We will review the notion of a propagator and discuss how it can be constructed in an explicit and invariant fashion, first on a Riemannian manifold and then on a Lorentzian spacetime. Finally, we will recall the notion of Hadamard state and relate the latter to hyperbolic propagators via the wavefront set, a subset of the cotangent bundle capturing the information about the singularities of a distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A general and holistic framework of mode decomposition and harmonic analysis is developed for vector valued fields in curved spacetimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]