Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Description of the Electron in the Electromagnetic Field: The Dirac Type Equation and the Equation for the Wave Function in Spinor Coordinate Space

Version 1 : Received: 11 January 2024 / Approved: 12 January 2024 / Online: 14 January 2024 (15:56:12 CET)
Version 2 : Received: 27 January 2024 / Approved: 29 January 2024 / Online: 29 January 2024 (08:43:41 CET)
Version 3 : Received: 24 February 2024 / Approved: 27 February 2024 / Online: 27 February 2024 (12:24:22 CET)
Version 4 : Received: 30 July 2024 / Approved: 31 July 2024 / Online: 31 July 2024 (15:20:59 CEST)

How to cite: Gorev, P. Description of the Electron in the Electromagnetic Field: The Dirac Type Equation and the Equation for the Wave Function in Spinor Coordinate Space . Preprints 2024, 2024011032. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202401.1032.v1 Gorev, P. Description of the Electron in the Electromagnetic Field: The Dirac Type Equation and the Equation for the Wave Function in Spinor Coordinate Space . Preprints 2024, 2024011032. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202401.1032.v1

Abstract

Physical processes are usually described using four-dimensional vector quantities - coordinate vector, momentum vector, current vector. But at the fundamental level they are characterized by spinors - coordinate spinors, impulse spinors, spinor wave functions. The propagation of fields and their interaction takes place at the spinor level, and since each spinor uniquely corresponds to a certain vector, the results of physical processes appear before us in vector form. For example, the relativistic Schrödinger equation and the Dirac equation are formulated by means of coordinate vectors, momentum vectors and quantum operators corresponding to them. In the Schrödinger equation the wave function is represented by a single complex quantity, in the Dirac equation a step forward is taken and the wave function is a spinor with complex components, but still coordinates and momentum are vectors. For a closed description of nature using only spinor quantities, it is necessary to have an equation similar to the Dirac equation in which momentum, coordinates and operators are spinors. It is such an equation that is presented in this paper. Using the example of the interaction between an electron and an electromagnetic field, we can see that the spinor equation contains more detailed information about the interaction than the vector equations. This is not new for quantum mechanics, since it describes interactions using complex wave functions, which cannot be observed directly, and only when measured goes to probabilities in the form of squares of the moduli of the wave functions. In the same way spinor quantities are not observable, but they completely determine observable vectors.In Section 2 of the paper, we analyze the quadratic form for an arbitrary four-component complex vector based on Pauli matrices. The form is invariant with respect to Lorentz transformations including any rotations and boosts. The invariance of the form allows us to construct on its basis an equation for a free particle combining the properties of the relativistic wave equation and the Dirac equation. For an electron in the presence of an electromagnetic potential it is shown that taking into account the commutation relations between the momentum and coordinate components allows us to obtain from this equation the known results describing the interactions of the electron spin with the electric and magnetic field. In section 3 of the paper this quadratic form is expressed through momentum spinors, which makes it possible to obtain an equation for the spinor wave function in spinor coordinate space by replacing the momentum spinor components by partial derivative operators on the corresponding coordinate spinor component. At the end of the paper the question on a possibility of second quantization of the electron field in the spinor coordinate space is touch upon.

Keywords

relativistic wave equation; Dirac equation; Pauli matrices; Schrödinger equation; second quantization

Subject

Physical Sciences, Particle and Field Physics

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