Fields are one of the following: scalars, vectors, spinors or some Lie algebra elements, right? And it's often said that scalars are spin-0 and vectors are spin-1. So, what's idea of correspondence between nature of field and it's spin value?
Remember to vote up questions/answers you find interesting or helpful (requires 15 reputation points)
|
0
1
|
||||
|
|
7
|
A classical field is a section of a vector bundle on the space-time manifold $M$. That vector bundle is typically obtained by using the associated bundle construction applied to the frame bundle of $M$, and some irreducible representation of SO(d) (you've noted that I'm in Eucledian signature). Sometimes, this is not enough, and one has to start with a double cover of the frame bundle of $M$, and use some irreducible representation of the double cover Spin(d) of SO(d). So, the types of field (scalar, vector, ...) are in one-to-one correspondence with types of irreducible representations of the spin group Spin(d). Those irreducible representations are classified. spin-0 = 1-dimensional trivial irrep For d=4, we have an isomorphism between Spin(4) and SU(2)xSU(2), and so irreducible representations are classified by pairs of non-negative half-integers. |
|||
|

