Dual electromagnetism: helicity, spin, momentum and angular momentum

Abstract

The dual symmetry between electric and magnetic fields is an important intrinsic property of Maxwell equations in free space. This symmetry underlies the conservation of optical helicity and, as we show here, is closely related to the separation of spin and orbital degrees of freedom of light (the helicity flux coincides with the spin angular momentum). However, in the standard field-theory formulation of electromagnetism, the field Lagrangian is not dual symmetric. This leads to problematic dual-asymmetric forms of the canonical energy–momentum, spin and orbital angular-momentum tensors. Moreover, we show that the components of these tensors conflict with the helicity and energy conservation laws. To resolve this discrepancy between the symmetries of the Lagrangian and Maxwell equations, we put forward a dual-symmetric Lagrangian formulation of classical electromagnetism. This dual electromagnetism preserves the form of Maxwell equations, yields meaningful canonical energy–momentum and angular-momentum tensors, and ensures a self-consistent separation of the spin and orbital degrees of freedom. This provides a rigorous derivation of the results suggested in other recent approaches. We make the Noether analysis of the dual symmetry and all the Poincaré symmetries, examine both local and integral conserved quantities and show that only the dual electromagnetism naturally produces a complete self-consistent set of conservation laws. We also discuss the observability of physical quantities distinguishing the standard and dual theories, as well as relations to quantum weak measurements and various optical experiments.