English

Relativistic dynamics compels a thermalized Fermi gas to a unique intrinsic parity eigenstate

Quantum Physics 2015-08-04 v1 High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

Dirac equation describes the dynamics of a relativistic spin-1/2 particle regarding its spatial motion and intrinsic degrees of freedom. Here we adopt the point of view that the spinors describe the state of a massive particle carrying two qubits of information: helicity and intrinsic parity. We show that the density matrix for a gas of free fermions, in thermal equilibrium, correlates helicity and intrinsic parity. Our results introduce the basic elements for discussing the spin-parity correlation for a Fermi gas: (1) at the ultra-relativistic domains, when the temperature is quite high, T>1010 KT > 10^{10}\ K, the fermions have no definite intrinsic parity (50% : 50%), which is maximally correlated with the helicity; (2) at very low temperature, T3 KT \approx 3 \ K, a unique parity dominates (conventionally chosen positive), by 102010^{20} to 11, while the helicity goes into a mixed state for spin up and down, and the quantum correlation decoheres. For the anti-fermions we get the opposite behavior. In the framework of quantum information, our result could be considered as a plausible explanation of why we do accept, as a fact (consistent with the experimental observation), that fermions (and anti-fermions), in our present epoch of a cool universe, have a unique intrinsic parity. The framework for constructing spin-parity entangled states is established.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1404.5576,
  title  = {Relativistic dynamics compels a thermalized Fermi gas to a unique intrinsic parity eigenstate},
  author = {Alex E. Bernardini and Salomon S. Mizrahi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1404.5576},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

14 pages, 2 figures