Duality in a fermion-like formulation for the electromagnetic field

TL;DR

This paper explores a fermion-like formulation of the electromagnetic field using a Dirac-like equation, revealing duality symmetry and its relation to chiral symmetry, and reinterpreting Maxwell's action as a mass term.

Contribution

It introduces a novel fermion-like formulation of electromagnetism that highlights duality symmetry and links it to chiral symmetry, offering new insights into the structure of Maxwell's theory.

Findings

Duality symmetry is realized in a fermion-like gauge field formulation.

Maxwell's action can be interpreted as a mass term within this framework.

The equivalence between duality and chiral symmetry is established.

Abstract

We employ the Dirac-like equation for the gauge field proposed by Majorana to obtain an action that is symmetric under duality transformation. We also use the equivalence between duality and chiral symmetry in this fermion-like formulation to show how the Maxwell action can be seen as a mass term.