TransWikia.com

Finite spinor transformation

Physics Asked on June 25, 2021

I am currently studying the finite spinor transformations in QFT.

There is equation which i do not fully understand. Rather i don’t understand the notation and what it represents:

In the script, we are observing a boost in the $x$-Direction.

  1. This is the equation i am having trouble understanding: $sigma_{munu}*I^{munu}=2sigma_{01}$ how did the book reached this result?

I don’t know how to write a matrix here but i can tell you what $I^{munu}$ contains. $I^{munu}$ is a 4×4 matrix. It contains a "1" in position 01 (row 0 column 1 ) and it has a "-1" in position 10 (row 1 column 0 ).the rest are zeros.

And my second question is:

  1. If $A^{munu}$ can be written in a matrix form, how is this different then $A^mu_nu$,when this one is also written in matrix form?

One Answer

Based on the definition of $I^{munu}$ you gave in the comment, the result simply comes by expanding the sum over repeated indices. Since the only elements of $I$ that are different from 0 are $I^{01}$ and $I^{10}$, then $sigma_{munu}I^{munu} = sigma_{01} - sigma_{10}$. Now because $sigma$ is antisymmetric $sigma_{01} - sigma_{10}=2sigma_{01}$. Maybe it's easier if you don't really think of tensors as matrices, but just as collections of elements labelled by indices. In this case $sigma$ is a collection of matrices, and $I$ is a collection of numbers, so this particular tensor product is a linear combination of matrices.

As for the second question, assume our convention for the Minkowski metric is $eta_{munu}=diag(1,-1,-1,-1)$. In this case, when going from $A^{munu}$ to ${A^mu}_nu$ elements whose second index is "space-like" index (i.e. 1, 2 or 3) will get multiplied by -1. You can convince yourself of this by just writing down ${A^mu}_nu=A^{murho}eta_{rhonu}$, fixing the indices $mu$ and $nu$ and expanding the sum over repeated indices for several couples of indices. So if you want to visualize these tensors as matrices, $$A^{munu}=begin{pmatrix} A^{00} & A^{01} & A^{02} & A^{03} A^{10} & A^{11} & A^{12} & A^{13} A^{20} & A^{21} & A^{22} & A^{23} A^{30} & A^{31} & A^{32} & A^{33} end{pmatrix},qquad {A^mu}_nu=begin{pmatrix} A^{00} & -A^{01} & -A^{02} & -A^{03} A^{10} & -A^{11} & -A^{12} & -A^{13} A^{20} & -A^{21} & -A^{22} & -A^{23} A^{30} & -A^{31} & -A^{32} & -A^{33} end{pmatrix} $$

Answered by Martina on June 25, 2021

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP