English

Obtaining consistent Lorentz gauging for a gravitationally coupled fermion

General Physics 2019-10-15 v3 High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

For internal gauge forces, the result of locally gauging, i.e., of performing the substitution D\partial \rightarrow D, is physically the same whether performed on the action or on the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations of motion. Rather unsettling, though, such commutativity fails for the standard way of coupling a Dirac fermion to the gravitational field in the setting of a local Lorentz gauge theory of general relativity in the vierbein formalism, the equivalence principle thus seemingly being here violated. This paper will present a formalism in which commutativity holds for the gravitational force as well, the action for the gravitational field itself being still the Einstein-Hilbert one. Notably, in this formalism, the spinor field will carry a world/coordinate index, rather than a Lorentz spinor index as it does standardly. More generally, no Lorentz indices will figure, neither vector indices nor spinor indices, which from a parsimonious point of view seems quite satisfactory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1906.12200,
  title  = {Obtaining consistent Lorentz gauging for a gravitationally coupled fermion},
  author = {John Fredsted},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1906.12200},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

v3: published version

R2 v1 2026-06-23T10:06:47.299Z