English

Exact correspondence between classical and Dirac-Pauli spinors in the weak-field limit of static and homogeneous electromagnetic fields

Quantum Physics 2017-05-19 v3

Abstract

It has long been speculated that the Dirac or, more generally, the Dirac-Pauli spinor in the Foldy-Wouthuysen (FW) representation should behave like a classical relativistic spinor in the low-energy limit when the probability of particle-antiparticle pair creation and annihilation is negligible. In the weak-field limit of static and homogeneous electromagnetic fields, by applying the method of direct perturbation theory inductively on the orders of 1/c1/c in the power series, we rigorously prove that it is indeed the case: the FW transformation of the Dirac-Pauli Hamiltonian is in full agreement with the classical counterpart, which is the sum of the orbital Hamiltonian for the Lorentz force equation and the spin Hamiltonian for the Thomas-Bargmann-Michel-Telegdi equation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1504.03453,
  title  = {Exact correspondence between classical and Dirac-Pauli spinors in the weak-field limit of static and homogeneous electromagnetic fields},
  author = {Dah-Wei Chiou and Tsung-Wei Chen},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.03453},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

6 pages; brief summary of the main result of arXiv:1405.4495; v3: minor improvements made; the main reference updated