Modelling the electron with Cosserat elasticity (Q2902664)

The authors suggest and analyse an alternative mathematical model for the electron in 1+2-dimensions. Instead of using the Dirac equation on a 1+2-dimensional Minkowski space \(\mathbb{M}^{1+2}\), they introduce a Lagrangian depending on an appropriate ortonormal coframe and a positive density defined on a 1+3-dimensional Kaluza-Klein extension. The mass of the electron mainly appears in this model as a periodicity condition on the solutions. The electromagnetic potential, along with the mass, give rise to mixing the partial derivatives appearing in the Lagrangian.NEWLINENEWLINESome of the advantages of the model are: it easily distinguishes between electrons and positrons, it does trivially rely on the use of covariant differentiation, and it can be generalised to a generic fixed Lorentzian metric on a 1+2 manifold. On the contrary, the model does not allow one to describe a dynamical metric, i.e. gravity, and some of its technical requirements are difficult to deal with. As far as this reviewer knows, the approach given by the authors introduces some new ideas. For instance, the density appears as a dynamical variable instead of being fixed that \(\rho=\sqrt{|\det g|}\), where \(g\) is the metric of the model.