Manifest spin 2 duality with electric and magnetic sources

TL;DR

The paper develops a manifestly duality-invariant formulation of linearized spin-2 fields by doubling the gauge structure and introducing duality-rotated potentials, enabling consistent coupling to external electric and magnetic sources. The approach resolves the Taub-NUT string into a Coulomb-like solution and yields electric and magnetic energy-momentum and angular momentum as surface charges, computed in a generalized Regge-Teitelboim framework. Key contributions include the construction of a duality-invariant action, explicit canonical structure with doubled fields, and a careful treatment of surface charges and Poincaré transformations in the presence of sources. The work provides a cohesive, gauge-invariant extension of Pauli-Fierz theory that accommodates dyons and clarifies the role of duality in linearized gravity with magnetic-type sources, with potential implications for higher-spin dualities and conserved charges in gravitational theories.

Abstract

We extend the formulation of spin 2 fields on Minkowski space which makes the action manifestly invariant under duality rotations to the case of interactions with external electric and magnetic sources by adding suitable potentials for the longitudinal and trace parts. In this framework, the string singularity of the linearized Taub-NUT solution is resolved into a Coulomb-like solution. Suitable surface charges to measure energy-momentum and angular momentum of both electric and magnetic type are constructed.