Why Spinors Are Irreducible if Gamma-Traceless: Explained

Join the discussion
Ask a follow-up here, or get your own question answered by working scientists, mathematicians and engineers — people, not an autocomplete.
Real named experts · corrections over time · the nuance an AI answer skips
7 replies · 3K views
filip97
Messages
30
Reaction score
0
I read this question

https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...onditions-is-a-vector-spinor-gamma-trace-free . Also I read Sexl and Urbantke book about groups. But I don't understand why spinors is irreducible if these are gamma-tracelees. Also I read many papers about higher spin fields in which doesn't explain and proof gamma traceless(irreducibility condition) of spinors of higher rank. Can any explain this ?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Ok, it is clearer. But why 1/2 component carried with divergence of Dirac spinor ? (This removing ghosts ?)
 
filip97 said:
Ok, it is clearer.
Is it? Then why are you asking this?
But why 1/2 component carried with divergence of Dirac spinor ?
First: [itex]\psi^{\mu}(x)[/itex] is a spinor-vector field. It describes spin-3/2 particle and its anti-particle. It is NOT a Dirac spinor (Dirac spinor field describes spin-1/2 particle and its anti-particle).
Second: The divergence of [itex]\psi^{\mu}(x)[/itex] IS a Dirac spinor because (as I have already explained in the other thread) [itex]\partial_{\mu}\psi^{\mu}[/itex] satisfies the Dirac equation. In other words, the field [itex]\psi (x) \equiv \partial_{\mu}\psi^{\mu}(x)[/itex] represents one of the two spin-1/2 components of the spinor-vector field [itex]\psi^{\mu}(x)[/itex]. All of this was explained in the other thread.
(This removing ghosts ?)
Which ghosts are these?
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: weirdoguy
filip97
Can we raising and lowering indices of mwtric spinor with 2-contravariant or 2-covariant with metric tensor ? I think that we can do this with sigma(mu,nu) this write in Sexl Urbantke book of group representation. I was post this question because don't clear ho we contract Dirac equation with gamma(mu). Thanks a lot !