Boundary electromagnetic duality from homological edge modes

Abstract

Abstract Recent years have seen a renewed interest in using ‘edge modes’ to extend the pre-symplectic structure of gauge theory on manifolds with boundaries. Here we further the investigation undertaken in [1] by using the formalism of homotopy pullback and Deligne- Beilinson cohomology to describe an electromagnetic (EM) duality on the boundary of M = B3 × ℝ. Upon breaking a generalized global symmetry, the duality is implemented by a BF-like topological boundary term. We then introduce Wilson line singularities on ∂M and show that these induce the existence of dual edge modes, which we identify as connections over a (−1)-gerbe. We derive the pre-symplectic structure that yields the central charge in [1] and show that the central charge is related to a non-trivial class of the (−1)-gerbe.