Related papers: Zero mass as a Borel structure
In this paper we demonstrate that massless particles cannot be considered as limiting case of massive particles. Instead, the usual symmetry structure based on semisimple groups like $U(1)$, $SU(2)$ and $SU(3)$ has to be replaced by less…
Wigner's little groups are subgroups of the Lorentz group dictating the internal space-time symmetries of massive and massless particles. These little groups are like O(3) and E(2) for massive and massless particles respectively. While the…
The ``little group'' for massless particles (namely, the Lorentz transformations $\Lambda$ that leave a null vector invariant) is isomorphic to the Euclidean group E2: translations and rotations in a plane. We show how to obtain explicitly…
We derive the stabiliser group of the four-vector, also known as Wigner's little group, in case of massless particle states, as the maximal solvable subgroup of the proper orthochronous Lorentz group of dimension four, known as the Borel…
In the present note the expansion of the wave function of a massless particle (with the definite value of its helicity) over the untary irreducible representaions of the Lorentz group (defined on the light cone) is used as for the analog of…
The Lorentz group is the fundamental language for space-time symmetries of relativistic particles. This group can these days be derived from the symmetries observed in other branches of physics. It is shown that this group can be derived…
It is noted that the internal space-time symmetries of relativistic particles are dictated by Wigner's little groups. The symmetry of massive particles is like the three-dimensional rotation group, while the symmetry of massless particles…
In this article the concept of mass is analyzed based on the special and general relativity theories and particle (quantum) physics. The mass of a particle (m=E(0)/c^2) is determined by the minimum (rest) energy to create that particle…
Why massless particles, for example photons, can only have two helicity one-particle states is the main subject of this work. As we know, the little group which describes massive particle one-particle states' transformations under the…
Some facts of the theory of the Lorentz group are specified for looking at the problems of light polarization optics in the frames of vector Stokes-Mueller and spinor Jones formalism. In view of great differences between properties of…
The light cone formalism of a massive scalar field has been shown by Dirac to have many advantages. But it is not manifestly Lorentz invariant. We will show that this is a feature not a bug: Lorentz invariance is indeed a symmetry, but in a…
If Einstein's photon is $E = cp = \hbar\omega$, Wigner's photon is its helicity which is a Lorentz-invariant concept coming from the E(2)-like little group for massless particles. In addition, the E(2)-like little group has two…
We consider a relativistic superalgebra in the picture in which the time and spatial derivative cannot be presented in the operators of the particle. The supersymmetry generators as well as the Hamilton operators for the massive…
Einstein's photo-electric effect allows us to regard electromagnetic waves as massless particles. Then, how is the photon helicity translated into the electric and magnetic fields perpendicular to the direction of propagation? This is an…
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…
In spacetimes of any dimensionality, the massless particle states that can be created and destroyed by a field in a given representation of the Lorentz group are severely constrained by the condition that the invariant Abelian subgroup of…
We write down the Poisson structure for a relativistic particle where the Lorentz group does not act canonically, but instead as a Poisson-Lie group. In so doing we obtain the classical limit of a particle moving on a noncommutative space…
Recently, a bundle theoretic description of massive single-particle state spaces, which is better suited for Relativistic Quantum Information Theory than the ordinary Hilbert space description, has been suggested. However, the mathematical…
We study a quantum mechanics with the usual postulates but in which the Heisenberg algebra of canonical commutation relations and the Poincare algebra are replaced by the Lie algebra of the homogeneous Lorentz group SO(5,1). It arises from…
A careful ab initio construction of the finite-mass (1/2,1/2) representation space of the Lorentz group reveals it to be a spin-parity multiplet. In general, it does not lend itself to a single-spin interpretation. We find that the…