Related papers: Wigner's Spins, Feynman's Partons, and Their Commo…
The 20th-century physics starts with Einstein and ends with Feynman. Einstein introduced the Lorentz-covariant world with E = mc^{2}. Feynman observed that fast-moving hadrons consist of partons which act incoherently with external signals.…
R. P. Feynman was quite fond of inventing new physics. It is shown that some of his physical ideas can be supported by the mathematical instruments available from the Lorentz group. As a consequence, it is possible to construct a…
In 1963, Eugene Paul Wigner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and application of fundamental symmetry…
According to Richard Feynman, the adventure of our science of physics is a perpetual attempt to recognize that the different aspects of nature are really different aspects of the same thing. It is therefore interesting to combine some, if…
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 second-order differential equation for a damped harmonic oscillator can be converted to two coupled first-order equations, with two two-by-two matrices leading to the group $Sp(2)$. It is shown that this oscillator system contains the…
In 1971, Feynman et al. published a paper on hadronic mass spectra and transition rates based on the quark model. Their starting point was a Lorentz-invariant differential equation. This equation can be separated into a Klein-Gordon…
When Einstein formulated his special relativity in 1905, he established the law of Lorentz transformations for point particles. It is now known that particles have internal space-time structures. Particles, such as photons and electrons,…
As Einstein's $E = mc^{2}$ unifies the energy-momentum relation for massive and massless particles, Wigner's little group unifies their internal space-time symmetries. It is pointed out that translational symmetries play essential roles…
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…
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…
Einstein's $E = mc^{2}$ unifies the momentum-energy relations for massive and massless particles. According to Wigner, the internal space-time symmetries of massive and massless particles are isomorphic to $O(3)$ and $E(2)$ respectively.…
The internal space-time symmetries of relativistic particles are dictated by Wigner's little groups. The $O(3)$-like little group for a massive particle at rest and the $E(2)$-like little group of a massless particle are two different…
It is a well-known fact that helicity is a Lorentz-invariant for massless but not for massive particles. Nevertheless, a satisfactory proof of this fact and a detailed analysis on the relative orientation between spin and the momentum are…
Spinor structure and internal symmetries are considered within one theoretical framework based on the generalized spin and abstract Hilbert space. Complex momentum is understood as a generating kernel of the underlying spinor structure. It…
The claim that a particle is an irreducible representation of the Poincar\'e group -- what I call \emph{Wigner's identification} -- is now, decades on from Wigner's (1939) original paper, so much a part of particle physics folklore that it…
Spin of elementary particles is the only kinematic degree of freedom not having classical corre- spondence. It arises when seeking for the finite-dimensional representations of the Lorentz group, which is the only symmetry group of…
Based on Feynman's lifetime efforts on quantum mechanics and relativity, it is concluded that the basic difference between field theory and string theory is that field theory is based on running waves while string theory should deal with…
Role of gauge symmetry in the proton spin problem has intricate and unresolved aspects. One of the interesting approaches to gain physical insights is to explore tha Landau problem in this context. A detailed study using the group theoretic…
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…