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Massless Fields as Unitary Representations of the Poincaré Group
Author(s) -
Niederer U.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
fortschritte der physik
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.469
H-Index - 71
eISSN - 1521-3978
pISSN - 0015-8208
DOI - 10.1002/prop.19790270403
Subject(s) - spinor , poincaré group , physics , covariant transformation , mathematical physics , unitary representation , unitarity , spin (aerodynamics) , covariance , group (periodic table) , boson , unitary state , zero (linguistics) , tensor (intrinsic definition) , massless particle , quantum mechanics , mathematics , pure mathematics , lie group , linguistics , statistics , philosophy , political science , law , thermodynamics
Relativistic zero‐mass fields are described as manifestly covariant unitary irreducible representations of the Poincaré group. The wave‐equations, which are a necessary condition for unitarity, are constructed for spinor fields of arbitrary spin and for tensor fields of integer spin. Poincaré covariance together with causality and positive energy are used to determine the commutators of quantized fields up to a positive multiple and to prove the spin‐statistics theorem. The use of potentials for boson fields is discussed and it is shown that, at the expense of manifest covariance, potentials may be introduced as zero‐mass limits of the massive Wigner representations.