- #1
Joker93
- 504
- 36
Homework Statement
The exercise needs us to first show that ##P^2## (with ##P_\mu=i\partial_\mu##) is not a Casimir invariant of the Conformal group. From this, it wants us to deduce that only massless theories could be conformally invariant.
Homework Equations
The Attempt at a Solution
I have shown that ##P^2## is not a Casimir operator; that is, it does not commute with all the generators of the conformal group. Specifically, I have found that:
##[P^2,D]=2iP^2##
##[P^2,K_\nu]=2i\ \{P_\nu,D\}+2i\{L_{\mu\nu},P^\mu\} ##
and the commutators between ##P^2## and the remaining generators vanish. This shows that ##P^2## is a Casimir operator of the Poincare group (that does not contain ##D## and ##K_\mu##).
Now, for the last part on how this shows us that only massless theories can be conformally invariant, I have no idea on how to show this. It might just be that the lecturer needs a heuristic argument though. We could do it using Lagrangians that contain a mass term and show that the mass term is not invariant under, say, scalings ##x^\mu\rightarrow \alpha x^\mu##, but this way does not follow from the fact that ##P^2## is not a Casimir operator.