On rational electromagnetic fields

•Novel construction method for rational electromagnetic field configurations in Minkowski space.•Complete basis of knot solutions for vacuum Maxwell fields.•Key idea is conformal equivalence to de Sitter space, where Maxwell theory is solved.•Complete classification via spherical harmonics on the three-sphere.•Relation between energy and helicity and characterize null fields and asymptotic energy flux. We employ a recently developed method for constructing rational electromagnetic field configurations in Minkowski space to investigate several properties of these source-free finite-action Maxwell (“knot”) solutions. The construction takes place on the Penrose diagram but uses features of de Sitter space, in particular its isometry group. This admits a classification of all knot solutions in terms of S3 harmonics, labeled by a spin 2j∈N0, which in fact provides a complete “knot basis” of finite-action Maxwell fields. We display a j=1 example, compute the energy for arbitrary spin-j configurations, derive a linear relation between spin and helicity and characterize the subspace of null fields. Finally, we present an expression for the electromagnetic flux at null infinity and demonstrate its equality with the total energy.