3-D spinors, spin-weighted functions and their applications (Q1418012)

Spin-weighted functions are an important tool for studying Euclidean and Lorentzian manifolds. Also the two-spinor calculus is an established tool in solving linear and nonlinear differential equations in theoretical physics. In the present book the author tries to provide a smooth path to these topics bypassing the abstract realm of Lie groups, Clifford algebras and other more advanced topics as twistors. Even more dangerous, the author skips, beside some introductory material presented in the first chapter, also the geometry behind spinors. Cartan introduced spinors to study projective and conformal geometries and higher geometrical objects as line complexes. A pedestrian introduction to spinors cannot work, in my opinion, without a thoughtful introduction to these fields developing a sound geometrical intuition. Reading the book, this fear becomes confirmed. While the style of writing is clear and understandable, the author just presents calculations, tabulates cases, and does not really explain the background and the underlying ideas to say why his calculations work out smoothly. To a reader without a deeper theoretic background many definitions have to appear to be ad-hoc, since she will not know e.g. the Lie group representation theory to understand the labeling of spherical harmonics and their relation with representations of the involved groups. Even worse, the author assumes the knowledge of Lie group terminology to name the transformation groups. The very down-to-earth presentation of the material obscures important distinctions, e.g. between Lie groups and Lie algebras, if given by matrices. This attitude becomes more and more peculiar when the author starts to discuss applications. Once in a while one is pointed to other monographs or original literature when key concepts are introduced. Either the reader consults this material or he lacks major insight why a particular calculation, presented in the text, is of mathematical or physical interest. This prevents the book from being suited for self study. However, the book may serve very well for a lecture course if the lecturer provides the missing information struggling with the gaps of the text in the abstract realm and/or with the involved geometry. The introductory chapters present the mathematical details of two spinors, in a very explicit matrix and vector based exposition. Spin weights are introduced and spin weighted spherical harmonics are carefully introduced including technical discussions of the antisymmetric spinor metric, real forms etc. The Euclidean definite case is treated as the indefinite case, both restricted to 3 dimensions. Starting in chapter 4, important differential equations of theoretical physics are solved in spherical (elliptical and parabolical) and cylindrical symmetry. The heading of chapter 5 is misleading. ``Spinor algebra'' is meant to delineate the transition from tensor description to two-spinor description, including transformation properties. The interesting section on the algebraic classification of (spin)tensors misses the opportunity to explain how this is related with classical invariant theory. Chapter 6 develops spinor analysis. It is hard to compete with Penrose-Rindler here, but the important tools and techniques are displayed and the material is dealt with in a clear fashion, however once more very explicit and assuming preknowledge about tensor analysis on manifolds. The inclusion of congruences is a nice feature if the reader has some background in hydrodynamics. This chapter is introduced to prepare the reader for the 7th chapter containing applications to general relativity. Once more, the important facts are displayed, but the reviewer fears, that a novice reader cannot digest e.g. Sen-Witten type arguments. The index is quite short and incomplete, as the literature is given in physicists style without title and full page numbers, which makes it hard to draw the information in a selected way from the book. However the table of contents is pretty detailed. Summarizing, the book indeed fills a gap in the literature and may be used for a lecture course, however it is recommended to fill in some gaps with abstract algebra and geometry which has to be taken from other sources. Furthermore the book may serve as a source for two-spinor formulae.