arXiv subjects

Claudio Bunster

Publications and source records attributed to Claudio Bunster.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2011

Extended Charged Events and Chern-Simons Couplings

Recently, the concept of dynamical extended charged events has been introduced, and it has been argued that they should play as central a role as that played by particles or ordinary branes. In this article we show that in the presence of a Chern-Simons coupling, a magnetically charged extended event emits an extended object, which geometrically is just like a Dirac string, but it is observable, obeys equations of motion, and may be electrically charged. We write a complete action principle which accounts for this effect. The action involves two Chern-Simons terms, one integrated over spacetime and the other integrated over the worldvolume of the submanifold that is the union of the Dirac world-sheet and the history of the emitted physical object. By demanding that the total charge emitted by a composite extended magnetic event be quantized according to Dirac's rule, we find a quantization condition for the Chern-Simons coupling. For a 1-form electric potential in D=2n+1 spacetime dimensions, the composite event is formed by n elementary extended magnetic events separated in time such that the product of their transverse spaces, together with the time axis, is the entire spacetime. We show that the emitted electric charge is given by the integral of the (n-1)-th exterior power of the electromagnetic field strength over the last elementary event, or, equivalently, over an appropriate closed surface. The extension to more general p-form potentials and higher dimensions is also discussed. For the case D=11, p=3, our result for the quantization of the Chern-Simons coupling was obtained previously in the context of M-theory, a remarkable agreement that makes the existence of events even more compelling.

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arXiv2011

The Action for Twisted Self-Duality

One may write the Maxwell equations in terms of two gauge potentials, one electric and one magnetic, by demanding that their field strengths should be dual to each other. This requirement is the condition of twisted self-duality. It can be extended to p-forms in spacetime of D dimensions, and it survives the introduction of a variety of couplings among forms of different rank, and also to spinor and scalar fields, which emerge naturally from supergravity. In this paper we provide a systematic derivation of the action principle, whose equations of motion are the condition of twisted self-duality. The derivation starts from the standard Maxwell action, extended to include the aforementioned couplings, and proceeds via the Hamiltonian formalism through the resolution of Gauss' law. In the pure Maxwell case we recover in this way an action that had been postulated by other authors, through an ansatz based on an action given earlier by us for untwisted self-duality. Those authors also extended their ansatz to include Chern-Simons couplings. In that case, we find a different result. The derivation from the standard extended Maxwell action implies of course that the theory is Lorentz-invariant and can be locally coupled to gravity. Nevertherless we include a direct compact Hamiltonian proof of these properties, which is based on the surface-deformation algebra. The symmetry in the dependence of the action on the electric and magnetic variables is manifest, since they appear as canonical conjugates. Spacetime covariance, although present, is not manifest.

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arXiv2007

A Monopole Near a Black Hole

We study an electric charge held at rest outside a magnetically charged black hole. We find that even if the electric charge is treated as a perturbation on a spherically symmetric magnetic Reissner-Nordstrom hole, the geometry at large distances is that of a magnetic Kerr-Newman black hole. When the charge approaches the horizon and crosses it, the exterior geometry becomes that of a Kerr-Newman hole with electric and magnetic charges and with total angular momentum given by the standard value for a charged monopole pair. Thus, in accordance with the "no-hair theorem", once the charge is captured by the black hole, the angular momentum associated with the charge monopole system, looses all traces of its exotic origin and it is perceived from the outside as common rotation. It is argued that a similar analysis performed on Taub-NUT space should give the same result, namely, if one holds an ordinary mass outside of the horizon of a Taub-NUT space with only magnetic mass, the system, as seen from large distances, is endowed with an angular momentum proportional to the product of the two kinds of masses. When the ordinary, electric, mass reaches the horizon, the exterior metric becomes that of a rotating Taub-NUT space.

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