Reflections, spinors, and projections on a Minkowski space underlie Dirac's equation

DOI10.1016/S0024-3795(96)90014-2MaRDI QIDQ1913658zbMATH OpenFDO

Authors I. S. Reed, Wolfgang F. Kraske

Publication date 10 March 1997

Published in Linear Algebra and its Applications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1016/S0024-3795(96)90014-2

zbMATH Keywords

Dirac equation Minkowski space projections reflections spinors

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Clifford algebras, spinors (15A66) Spin and Spin({}^c) geometry (53C27)

Review text

This article is simply a review with reasonable mathematical rigour of well-known results in the theory of reflections, projections and spinors, presented with various degrees of rigour in many physical and mathematical textbooks. We quote that the author's results can be obtained more easily without the introduction of matrix representations using a Clifford approach, as e.g. demonstrated by the reviewer, \textit{Q. A. G. de Souza, J. Vaz jun.} and \textit{P. Lounesto} [Int. J. Theor. Phys. 35, No. 9, 1849-1900 (1996)]. It is necessary to emphasize that the authors confound Minkowski spacetime (which is an affine space) with the Minkowski vector space that they use. Finally, the definition of inertial reference frame (irf) they give is odd. Indeed, the correct definition is that an irf is a timelike vector field \(I \in \text{sec TM}\) pointing to the future such that \(g(I,I) = 1\), \(g : \text{TM} \times \text{TM} \to \mathbb{R}\) being the metric tensor of \(M\).

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