Modelling the electron with Cosserat elasticity

DOI10.1112/S002557931200006XMaRDI QIDQ2902664zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors James Burnett, Dmitri Vassiliev

Publication date 22 August 2012

Published in Mathematika (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1007.3481

zbMATH Keywords

Dirac equationelectronKaluza-Klein extensionMinkowski space

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Time-dependent Schrödinger equations and Dirac equations (35Q41) PDEs in connection with mechanics of deformable solids (35Q74)

Abstract: We suggest an alternative mathematical model for the electron in dimension 1+2. We think of our (1+2)-dimensional spacetime as an elastic continuum whose material points can experience no displacements, only rotations. This framework is a special case of the Cosserat theory of elasticity. Rotations of material points are described mathematically by attaching to each geometric point an orthonormal basis which gives a field of orthonormal bases called the coframe. As the dynamical variables (unknowns) of our theory we choose a coframe and a density. We then add an extra (third) spatial dimension, extend our coframe and density into dimension 1+3, choose a conformally invariant Lagrangian proportional to axial torsion squared, roll up the extra dimension into a circle so as to incorporate mass and return to our original (1+2)-dimensional spacetime by separating out the extra coordinate. The main result of our paper is the theorem stating that our model is equivalent to the Dirac equation in dimension 1+2. In the process of analyzing our model we also establish an abstract result, identifying a class of nonlinear second order partial differential equations which reduce to pairs of linear first order equations.

Review text

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.

Recommendations

• Dirac equation as a special case of Cosserat elasticity
• The stationary Weyl equation and Cosserat elasticity
• Rotational elasticity
• Fundamental equations of physics and Cosserat medium. I: Linear electromagneto-gravitation
• Parametrization of Cosserat equations

Cites work

• Field equations in teleparallel space-time: Einstein's \textit{Fernparallelismus} approach toward unified field theory
• Rotational elasticity
• Special orthonormal frames
• The stationary Weyl equation and Cosserat elasticity
• Weyl's Lagrangian in teleparallel form

Cited in

(3)

• Dirac equation as a special case of Cosserat elasticity
• Spectral theoretic characterization of the massless Dirac operator
• Rotational elasticity and couplings to linear elasticity

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