Nontrivial extensions of a massless representation with definite helicity of the Poincaré group in \(3+1\) dimensions by the tensor product of two other massless representations with definite helicity (Q1105710): Difference between revisions

The Poincaré group, i.e., the group of symmetry operations of flat space-time, is known to admit infinite-dimensional irreducible unitary spinor representations \(U_ n\) describing massless particles of helicity n/2. The present letter is devoted to proving one technical result (stated as Theorem 2) which characterizes, up to coboundaries, all extension cocycles of \(U_ n\) by \(U_{n_ 1}\otimes U_{n_ 2}\). In particular, cocycles are trivial if \(n-n_ 1-n_ 2\) is odd. Also, any nontrivial cocycle becomes a coboundary when restricted to the translation subgroup. Though applications of this result to physics are not discussed, it is hinted that it may be useful for the construction of nonlinear representations of the Poincaré group.