Axion and dilaton + metric emerge jointly from an electromagnetic model universe with local and linear response behavior

Abstract

We take a quick look at the different possible universally coupled scalar fields in nature. Then, we discuss how the gauging of the group of scale transformations (dilations), together with the Poincaré group, leads to a Weyl–Cartan spacetime structure. There the dilaton field finds a natural surrounding. Moreover, we describe shortly the phenomenology of the hypothetical axion field. In the second part of our essay, we consider a spacetime, the structure of which is exclusively specified by the premetric Maxwell equations and a fourth rank electromagnetic response tensor density [Formula: see text] with 36 independent components. This tensor density incorporates the permittivities, permeabilities and the magneto-electric moduli of spacetime. No metric, no connection, no further property is prescribed. If we forbid birefringence (double-refraction) in this model of spacetime, we eventually end up with the fields of an axion, a dilaton and the 10 components of a metric tensor with Lorentz signature. If the dilaton becomes a constant (the vacuum admittance) and the axion field vanishes, we recover the Riemannian spacetime of general relativity theory. Thus, the metric is encapsulated in [Formula: see text], it can be derived from it.