TEORIA GRACELI DE NÚMEROS DE SPINORES, TENSORES E MOMENTUM INTRÍNSECO.
In quantum field theory, the Dirac spinor is the spinor that describes all known fundamental particles that are fermions, with the possible exception of neutrinos. It appears in the plane-wave solution to the Dirac equation, and is a certain combination of two Weyl spinors, specifically, a bispinor that transforms "spinorially" under the action of the Lorentz group.
Dirac spinors are important and interesting in numerous ways. Foremost, they are important as they do describe all of the known fundamental particle fermions in nature; this includes the electron and the quarks. Algebraically they behave, in a certain sense, as the "square root" of a vector. This is not readily apparent from direct examination, but it has slowly become clear over the last 60 years that spinorial representations are fundamental to geometry. For example, effectively all Riemannian manifolds can have spinors and spin connections built upon them, via the Clifford algebra.[1] The Dirac spinor is specific to that of Minkowski spacetime and Lorentz transformations; the general case is quite similar.
This article is devoted to the Dirac spinor in the Dirac representation. This corresponds to a specific representation of the gamma matrices, and is best suited for demonstrating the positive and negative energy solutions of the Dirac equation. There are other representations, most notably the chiral representation, which is better suited for demonstrating the chiral symmetry of the solutions to the Dirac equation. The chiral spinors may be written as linear combinations of the Dirac spinors presented below; thus, nothing is lost or gained, other than a change in perspective with regards to the discrete symmetries of the solutions.
The remainder of this article is laid out in a pedagogical fashion, using notations and conventions specific to the standard presentation of the Dirac spinor in textbooks on quantum field theory. It focuses primarily on the algebra of the plane-wave solutions. The manner in which the Dirac spinor transforms under the action of the Lorentz group is discussed in the article on bispinors.
Definition
[edit]The Dirac spinor is the bispinor in the plane-wave ansatz / G* *= = [ ] ω , , .=
of the free Dirac equation for a spinor with mass , / G* *= = [ ] ω , , .=
which, in natural units becomesand with Feynman slash notation may be written
/ G* *= = [ ] ω , , .=
An explanation of terms appearing in the ansatz is given below.
- The Dirac field is , a relativistic spin-1/2 field, or concretely a function on Minkowski space valued in , a four-component complex vector function.
- The Dirac spinor related to a plane-wave with wave-vector is , a vector which is constant with respect to position in spacetime but dependent on momentum .
- The inner product on Minkowski space for vectors and is .
- / G* *= = [ ] ω , , .=
- The four-momentum of a plane wave is / G* *= = [ ] ω , , .=
- where is arbitrary,
- In a given inertial frame of reference, the coordinates are . These coordinates parametrize Minkowski space. In this article, when appears in an argument, the index is sometimes omitted.
The Dirac spinor for the positive-frequency solution can be written as
/ G* *= = [ ] ω , , .= where
- is an arbitrary two-spinor, concretely a vector.
- is the Pauli vector,
- is the positive square root . For this article, the subscript is sometimes omitted and the energy simply written .
In natural units, when m2 is added to p2 or when m is added to , m means mc in ordinary units; when m is added to E, m means mc2 in ordinary units. When m is added to or to it means (which is called the inverse reduced Compton wavelength) in ordinary units.