- #1
Maurice7510
- 55
- 1
Homework Statement
This isn't a homework problem; it's just something I'm working on and I'm a little confused as to how to go about dealing with what I have. I have several traces of Dirac's gamma matrices, and I know that the trace of an odd number of gamma matrices is zero. So my first question is: does it matter *which* gamma matrices? For example, one of my traces has
$$ \gamma_{\nu}\gamma^5\gamma^{\rho}\gamma^{\alpha}\gamma^{\sigma}\gamma^0\gamma^5\gamma^0\gamma^{\lambda}\gamma_{\mu}\gamma^{\beta} $$ Since each $$\gamma^5$$ is a product of 4 gamma matrices, altogether this would be a product of 17, which is odd. But some are $$\gamma^{\mu}$$, some $$\gamma^0$$ and some $$\gamma^5$$ and I'm just not sure what the rules are for this type of thing.
Homework Equations
$$Tr (ABC) = Tr (CAB) = Tr (BCA)$$
$$Tr (A +B) = Tr(A)+Tr(B)$$
$$Tr(aA) = aTr(A)$$
The Attempt at a Solution
I would think that this would, in fact, still be zero because there's an odd number of them. Otherwise I would probably use commutation/anticommutation relations to bring the $$gamma^0$$ and $$\gamma^5$$ together (respectively) to get unity, then just deal with the rest.