Padmanabhan's Boundary Variational Principle for Electrodynamics and Yang-Mills Theory

Abstract

In this note, we revisit a variational principle introduced by Padmanabhan for describing gravitation using a field action composed of a boundary term. We demonstrate that this procedure can also be applied to derive Maxwell's and Yang-Mills equations. Additionally, we find that in this boundary approach, \(\mathcal{CP}\)-violating dual couplings and spontaneous symmetry breaking through gauge boson masses emerge in a manner analogous to the appearance of the cosmological constant in the original gravitational context.