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Phys. Rev. D 62, 044010 (2000) [14 pages]

Dirac-Kähler approach connected to quantum mechanics in Grassmann space

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N. Mankoč Borštnik
Department of Physics, University of Ljubljana, Jadranska 19, Ljubljana, Solvenia,
J. Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, Ljubljana, 1111, Slovenia,
Promørska Institute for Natural Sciences and Technology, Marežganskega upøra 2, Koper, 6000, Slovenia

H. B. Nielsen
Department of Physics, Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, Copenhagen, DK-2100, Denmark
TH Division, CERN, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland

Received 27 September 1999; published 18 July 2000

We compare the way one of us obtained spinors from fields, which are a priori antisymmetric tensor fields, to the Dirac-Kähler rewriting. Since using our Grassmann formulation is simple it may be useful in describing the Dirac-Kähler formulation of spinors and in generalizing it to vector internal degrees of freedom and to charges. The “cheat” concerning the Lorentz transformations for spinors is the same in both cases and is put forward in the Grassmann formulation. Also the generalizations are clearly pointed out. The discrete symmetries are discussed, in particular the appearance of two kinds of time-reversal operators as well as the unavoidability of four families and the evenness and oddness of the Dirac matrices.

© 2000 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.62.044010
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.62.044010
PACS:
04.50.+h, 11.10.Kk, 11.30.-j, 12.10.-g