Published April 15, 1984 | Version v1
Journal article

Symmetries of the Dirac equation

  • 1. Department of Physics, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011

Description

The symmetry of the free Dirac equation recently discussed by Radford is regarded as a subgroup of a larger SL(2,C) group of transformations. The Radford Lagrangian is shown to be unsatisfactory for a field theory quantized according to Fermi-Dirac statistics, and is replaced by a suitable alternative. The symmetry of the Dirac equation, of the equal-time field anticommutation relations, and of the Lagrangian, is studied under SL(2,C) and various subgroups. In particular, it is found that the Radford subgroup is not a symmetry of the quantized field theory

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Phys. Rev., D
Journal Volume
29
Journal Issue
8
Series
Phys. Rev., D.
Journal Page Range
1848-1850
ISSN
0556-2821