Gauge and group properties of massless fields in any dimension
- 21 May 1994
- journal article
- Published by IOP Publishing in Journal of Physics A: General Physics
- Vol. 27 (10) , 3565-3574
- https://doi.org/10.1088/0305-4470/27/10/030
Abstract
It is shown that the solvable structure of the stability group of a massless field yields, in a simple and short way, useful information about the physical polarization states, and the structure of the Hilbert space for such a field. It is also shown that such fields are necessarily gauge fields; the exact form of the gauge transformation follows from the structure of the equivalence classes implied by the group properties. Some examples for spinor and tensor fields in general dimensions are worked out and the structure of the Hilbert space for gravitational radiation is discussed in some detail.Keywords
This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- Canonical quantization of four- and five-dimensional U(1) gauge theoriesPhysical Review A, 1993
- Poincaré algebra massless representationsNuclear Physics B - Proceedings Supplements, 1989
- Interaction of Schrödinger electrons and photonsPhysical Review A, 1979
- Zero-mass and nondecomposable representationsIl Nuovo Cimento (1869-1876), 1965
- Photons and Gravitons in Perturbation Theory: Derivation of Maxwell's and Einstein's EquationsPhysical Review B, 1965
- Feynman Rules for Any Spin. II. Massless ParticlesPhysical Review B, 1964
- On Unitary Representations of the Inhomogeneous Lorentz GroupAnnals of Mathematics, 1939