English

Helicity of spin-extended chiral particles

High Energy Physics - Theory 2016-04-05 v5 Other Condensed Matter High Energy Physics - Phenomenology

Abstract

The helicity of a free massless relativistic particle, χo=s.p/p\chi^o={\bf s}.{\bf p}/|{\bf p}|, is generalized, for a particle in an electromagnetic field, to χ=s.p/E\chi={\bf s}.{\bf p}/{\cal E}, where E{\cal E} is the modified kinetic energy. Both χo\chi^o and χ\chi coincide and are conserved for minimal coupling (gyromagnetic ratio g=0g=0) but are different and neither of them is conserved when the coupling is non-minimal, g0g\neq0, generating non-zero effective mass. For a chiral particle with g=2g=2 in a constant electric field both helicities converge asymptotically to the same value. Helicity is also conserved for minimal gravitational coupling.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1508.02188,
  title  = {Helicity of spin-extended chiral particles},
  author = {M. Elbistan and C. Duval and P. A. Horvathy and P. -M. Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.02188},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

Published version, slightly extended. 18 pages, 4 figures