Contributor info: Prof. Jorge Russo

Jorge G. Russo, Paul K. Townsend

SciPost Phys. 16, 124 (2024) · published 13 May 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Born's original 1933 theory of nonlinear electrodynamics (in contrast to the later Born-Infeld theory) is acausal for strong fields. We explore the issue of strong-field causality violation in families of theories containing Born and/or Born-Infeld, and many variants that have been previously proposed in contexts that include cosmology and black hole physics. Many of these variants are acausal and hence unphysical. A notable exception is the modified Born-Infeld theory with ModMax as its conformal weak-field limit.