Nonlinear Self-Duality and Supersymmetry

Abstract

We review self-duality of nonlinear electrodynamics and its extension to several Abelian gauge fields coupled to scalars. We then describe self-duality in supersymmetric models, both N = 1 and N = 2. The self-duality equations, which have to be satisfied by the action of any self-dual system, are found and solutions are discussed. One important example is the Born-Infeld action. We explain why the N = 2 supersymmetric actions proposed so far are not the correct world-volume actions for D3 branes in d = 6.