On Covariant Actions for Chiral $p-$Forms

Abstract: We construct a Lorentz and generally covariant, polynomial action for free chiral $p-$forms, classically equivalent to the Pasti-Sorokin-Tonin (PST) formulation. The minimal set up requires introducing an auxiliary $p-$form on top of the physical gauge $p-$form and the PST scalar. The action enjoys multiple duality symmetries, including those that exchange the roles of physical and auxiliary $p-$form fields. Actions of the same type are available for duality-symmetric formulations, which is demonstrated on the example of the electromagnetic field in four dimensions. There, the degrees of freedom of a single Maxwell field are described employing four distinct vector gauge fields and a scalar field.