In mathematical physics, the gamma matrices,
Contents
- Mathematical structure
- Physical structure
- Expressing the Dirac equation
- The fifth gamma matrix 5
- Identities
- Trace identities
- Normalization
- Feynman slash notation
- Other representations
- Dirac basis
- Weyl chiral basis
- Majorana basis
- C13C and C13R
- Euclidean Dirac matrices
- Chiral representation
- Non relativistic representation
- References
In Dirac representation, the four contravariant gamma matrices are
Analogous sets of gamma matrices can be defined in any dimension and signature of the metric. For example, the Pauli matrices are a set of "gamma" matrices in dimension 3 with metric of Euclidean signature (3,0). In 5 spacetime dimensions, the 4 gammas above together with the fifth gamma matrix to be presented below generate the Clifford algebra.
Mathematical structure
The defining property for the gamma matrices to generate a Clifford algebra is the anticommutation relation
where
This defining property is more fundamental than the numerical values used in the specific representation of the gamma matrices. Covariant gamma matrices are defined by
and Einstein notation is assumed.
Note that the other sign convention for the metric, (− + + +) necessitates either a change in the defining equation:
or a multiplication of all gamma matrices by
Physical structure
The Clifford Algebra Cl1,3(R) over spacetime V can be regarded as the set of real linear operators from V to itself, End(V), or more generally, when complexified to Cl1,3(R)C, as the set of linear operators from any 4-dimensional complex vector space to itself. More simply, given a basis for V, Cl1,3(R)C is just the set of all 4 × 4 complex matrices, but endowed with a Clifford algebra structure. Spacetime is assumed to be endowed with the Minkowski metric ημν. A space of bispinors, Ux, is also assumed at every point in spacetime, endowed with the bispinor representation of the Lorentz group. The bispinor fields Ψ of the Dirac equations, evaluated at any point x in spacetime, are elements of Ux, see below. The Clifford algebra is assumed to act on Ux as well (by matrix multiplication with column vectors Ψ(x) in Ux for all x). This will be the primary view of elements of Cl1,3(R)C in this section.
For each linear transformation S of Ux, there is a transformation of End(Ux) given by SES−1 for E in Cl1,3(R)C ≈ End(Ux). If S belongs to a representation of the Lorentz group, then the induced action E ↦ SES−1 will also belong to a representation of the Lorentz group, see Representation theory of the Lorentz group.
If S(Λ) is the bispinor representation acting on Ux of an arbitrary Lorentz transformation Λ in the standard (4-vector) representation acting on V, then there is a corresponding operator on End(Ux) = Cl1,3(R)C given by
showing that the γμ can be viewed as a basis of a representation space of the 4-vector representation of the Lorentz group sitting inside the Clifford algebra. This means that quantities of the form
should be treated as 4-vectors in manipulations. It also means that indices can be raised and lowered on the γ using the metric ημν as with any 4-vector. The notation is called the Feynman slash notation. The slash operation maps the unit vectors eμ of V, or any 4-dimensional vector space, to basis vectors γμ. The transformation rule for slashed quantities is simply
One should note that this is different from the transformation rule for the γμ, which are now treated as (fixed) basis vectors. The designation of the 4-tuple (γμ) = (γ0, γ1, γ2, γ3) as a 4-vector sometimes found in the literature is thus a slight misnomer. The latter transformation corresponds to an active transformation of the components of a slashed quantity in terms of the basis γμ, and the former to a passive transformation of the basis γμ itself.
The elements σμν = γμγν − γνγμ form a representation of the Lie algebra of the Lorentz group. This is a spin representation. When these matrices, and linear combinations of them, are exponentiated, they are bispinor representations of the Lorentz group, e.g., the S(Λ) of above are of this form. The 6-dimensional space the σμν span is the representation space of a tensor representation of the Lorentz group. For the higher order elements of the Clifford algebra in general, and their transformation rules, see the article Dirac algebra. But it is noted here that the Clifford algebra has no subspace being the representation space of a spin representation of the Lorentz group in the context used here.
Expressing the Dirac equation
In natural units, the Dirac equation may be written as
where
Switching to Feynman notation, the Dirac equation is
The fifth gamma matrix, γ5
It is useful to define the product of the four gamma matrices as follows:
Although
This matrix is useful in discussions of quantum mechanical chirality. For example, a Dirac field can be projected onto its left-handed and right-handed components by:
Some properties are:
The set {γ0, γ1, γ2, γ3, iγ5} therefore, by the last two properties (keeping in mind that i2 = −1) and those of the old gammas, forms the basis of the Clifford algebra in 5 spacetime dimensions for the metric signature (1,4). In metric signature (4,1), the set {γ0, γ1, γ2, γ3, γ5} is used, where the γμ are the appropriate ones for the (3,1) signature. This pattern is repeated for spacetime dimension 2n even and the next odd dimension 2n + 1 for all n ≥ 1. For more detail, see Higher-dimensional gamma matrices.
Identities
The following identities follow from the fundamental anticommutation relation, so they hold in any basis (although the last one depends on the sign choice for
Trace identities
The gamma matrices obey the following trace identities:
Proving the above involves the use of three main properties of the Trace operator:
Normalization
The gamma matrices can be chosen with extra hermiticity conditions which are restricted by the above anticommutation relations however. We can impose
and for the other gamma matrices (for k = 1, 2, 3)
One checks immediately that these hermiticity relations hold for the Dirac representation.
The above conditions can be combined in the relation
The hermiticity conditions are not invariant under the action
Feynman slash notation
The Feynman slash notation is defined by
for any 4-vector a.
Here are some similar identities to the ones above, but involving slash notation:
whereOther representations
The matrices are also sometimes written using the 2×2 identity matrix,
where k runs from 1 to 3 and the σk are Pauli matrices.
Dirac basis
The gamma matrices we have written so far are appropriate for acting on Dirac spinors written in the Dirac basis; in fact, the Dirac basis is defined by these matrices. To summarize, in the Dirac basis:
Weyl (chiral) basis
Another common choice is the Weyl or chiral basis, in which
or in more compact notation:
The Weyl basis has the advantage that its chiral projections take a simple form,
The idempotence of the chiral projections is manifest. By slightly abusing the notation and reusing the symbols
where now
Another possible choice of the Weyl basis has
The chiral projections take a slightly different form from the other Weyl choice,
In other words,
where
Majorana basis
There is also the Majorana basis, in which all of the Dirac matrices are imaginary and spinors are real. In terms of the Pauli matrices, it can be written as
The reason for making the gamma matrices imaginary is solely to obtain the particle physics metric (+,−,−,−) in which squared masses are positive. The Majorana representation however is real. One can factor out the
Cℓ1,3(C) and Cℓ1,3(R)
The Dirac algebra can be regarded as a complexification of the real algebra Cℓ1,3(R), called the space time algebra:
Cℓ1,3(R) differs from Cℓ1,3(C): in Cℓ1,3(R) only real linear combinations of the gamma matrices and their products are allowed.
Two things deserve to be pointed out. As Clifford algebras, Cℓ1,3(C) and Cℓ4(C) are isomorphic, see classification of Clifford algebras. The reason is that the underlying signature of the spacetime metric loses its signature (3,1) upon passing to the complexification. However, the transformation required to bring the bilinear form to the complex canonical form is not a Lorentz transformation and hence not "permissible" (at the very least impractical) since all physics is tightly knit to the Lorentz symmetry and it is preferable to keep it manifest.
Proponents of geometric algebra strive to work with real algebras wherever that is possible. They argue that it is generally possible (and usually enlightening) to identify the presence of an imaginary unit in a physical equation. Such units arise from one of the many quantities in a real Clifford algebra that square to −1, and these have geometric significance because of the properties of the algebra and the interaction of its various subspaces. Some of these proponents also question whether it is necessary or even useful to introduce an additional imaginary unit in the context of the Dirac equation.
However, in contemporary practice, the Dirac algebra rather than the space time algebra continues to be the standard environment the spinors of the Dirac equation "live" in.
Euclidean Dirac matrices
In quantum field theory one can Wick rotate the time axis to transit from Minkowski space to Euclidean space. This is particularly useful in some renormalization procedures as well as lattice gauge theory. In Euclidean space, there are two commonly used representations of Dirac Matrices:
Chiral representation
Notice that the factors of
will emerge. It is also worth noting that there are variants of this which insert instead
In Euclidean space,
Using the anti-commutator and noting that in Euclidean space
In Chiral basis in Euclidean space,
which is unchanged from its Minkowski version.