Generalisations of the Russo-Townsend formulation

preprint2026arXivOpen access

Abstract

As a generalisation of the recent construction by Russo and Townsend, we propose a new approach to generate U(1)\mathsf{U}(1) duality-invariant models for nonlinear electrodynamics. It is based on the use of two building blocks: (i) a fixed (but otherwise arbitrary) model for self-dual nonlinear electrodynamics with Lagrangian L(Fμν;g)L(F_{μν};g) depending on a duality-invariant parameter gg; and (ii) an arbitrary potential W(ψ)W(ψ), with ψψ an auxiliary scalar field. It turns out that the model L(Fμν;ψ)=L(Fμν;ψ)+W(ψ)\mathfrak{L}(F_{μν};ψ) = L(F_{μν};ψ) + W(ψ) leads to a self-dual theory for nonlinear electrodynamics upon elimination of ψψ. As an illustration, we work out two examples in which the seed Lagrangian L(Fμν;g)L(F_{μν};g) corresponds to the Born-Infeld model and two particular potentials W(ψ)W(ψ) are chosen such that integrating out ψψ gives: (i) the ModMaxBorn theory; and (ii) the ModMax theory. We also briefly discuss supersymmetric generalisations of the proposed formulation.

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