Talk:Rarita–Schwinger equation

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Category[edit]

since the Klein-Gordon eqn is also in that category, I changed cat:equations to cat:PDE. If all field equations were classified there, they could even make up a subcategory of their own... — MFH:Talk 21:40, 30 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Gamma matrices convention[edit]

In Weinberg's textbook, the gamma matrices are defined such that $\{\gamma ^{\mu },\gamma ^{\nu }\}=2\eta ^{\mu \nu }$ and the metric $\eta ^{\mu \nu }=diag(-1,1,1,1)$ . This might need to be pointed out to avoid confusions.

Wrong mass term in the Lagrangian[edit]

The mass term in the Lagrangian will be wrong without the antisymmetric product of two gamma matrices. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.122.53.167 (talk) 04:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the comment. Can you provide some reference to the correct Lagrangian? -- þħɥʂıɕıʄʈ^ʝɘɖı 18:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm being dense here, but does the $\gamma ^{\mu \nu }$ term in the Lagrangian suppose to signify $1/2[\gamma ^{\mu },\gamma ^{\mu }]=1/2(\gamma ^{\mu }\gamma ^{\nu }-\gamma ^{\nu }\gamma ^{\mu })$ ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.193.118.186 (talk) 14:45, 27 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have updated both the RS equation and the Lagrangian to the correct form; c.f. the already-referenced G. Velo, D. Zwanziger, Phys. Rev. 186, 1337 (1969). Yes, there is an antisymmetric gamma product in the mass term. Yes, $\gamma ^{\mu \nu }={\frac {1}{2}}[\gamma ^{\mu },\gamma ^{\mu }]$ ; I have switched this to the more commonly used $\sigma ^{\mu \nu }\equiv {\frac {i}{2}}\left[\gamma ^{\mu },\gamma ^{\nu }\right]$ . N.B. in the Velo and Zwanziger reference the lack of $i$ in the definitions of $\sigma ^{\mu \nu }$ and $\gamma ^{5}$ .

I intend to make citations on this page in-line, but I don't have more time at this very moment.

The "in need of attention from an expert" box was added by a bot; what more, if anything, do we want in this page so that we can remove said box?

Calavicci (talk) 00:05, 17 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I think S. Weinberg's books should give the correct formulaes. --B wik (talk) 18:57, 15 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

sigma notation[edit]

Does the $\sigma$ notation in this article correspond to the $\sigma$ in the previous post? If so, can someone clarify this in the article itself? 109.153.12.132 (talk) 23:09, 26 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]