English

Loop Representation of Wigner's Little Groups

General Physics 2017-07-14 v2 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Wigner's little groups are the subgroups of the Lorentz group whose transformations leave the momentum of a given particle invariant. They thus define the internal space-time symmetries of relativistic particles. These symmetries take different mathematical forms for massive and for massless particles. However, it is shown possible to construct one unified representation using a graphical description. This graphical approach allows us to describe vividly parity, time reversal, and charge conjugation of the internal symmetry groups. As for the language of group theory, the two-by-two representation is used throughout the paper. While this two-by-two representation is for spin-1/2 particles, it is shown possible to construct the representations for spin-0 particles, spin-1 particles, as well as for higher-spin particles, for both massive and massless cases. It is shown also that the four-by-four Dirac matrices constitute a two-by-two representation of Wigner's little group.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1707.03683,
  title  = {Loop Representation of Wigner's Little Groups},
  author = {Sibel Baskal and Young S. Kim and Marilyn E. Noz},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1707.03683},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

LaTex 26 pages, with 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:44:41.591Z