Self-duality beyond chiral p-form actions

The self-duality of chiral p-forms was orignally investigated by Pasti, Sor okin and Tonin in a manifestly Lorentz covariant action with non-polynomial auxiliary fields. The investigation was then extended to other chiral p-fo rm actions. In this paper we point out that the self-duality appears in a w ider context of theoretical models that relate to chiral p-forms. We demons trate this by considering. the interacting model of Floreanini-Jackiw chira l bosons and gauge fields, the generalized chiral Schwinger model (GCSM) an d the latter's gauge invariant formulation, and discover that the self-dual ity of the GCSM corresponds to the vector and axial vector current duality. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.