This file is licensed under the creative commons attributionshare alike 3. Dautres repr esentations equivalentes sont bien sur possibles en appliquant une matrice inversible 4 4 quelconque au spineur 7. For the love of physics walter lewin may 16, 2011 duration. The schrodinger equation is not relativistically invariant. Also we would like to have a consistent description of the spin of the electron that in the nonrelativistic theory has to be added by hand. Fermions and the dirac equation in 1928 dirac proposed the following form for the electron wave equation. Its applications are so widespread that a description of all aspects cannot be done with sufficient depth within a single volume is a modern presentation of the relativistic quantum. For a free fermion the wavefunction is the product of a plane wave and a dirac spinor, up. The dirac equation we will try to find a relativistic quantum mechanical description of the electron.
A 3, 60 1931 quantised singularities in the electromagnetic field p. The best known of these functions are the heaviside step function, the dirac delta function, and the staircase function. It is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity1 and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics. In particle physics, the dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by british physicist paul dirac in 1928. The presentation is essentially selfcontained, but the reader is assumed to possess some elements of di.
Produit par le ccsd 30 aug 2005 physique quantique universit. Diracfierzpauli generalized equations for spin higher than 12 19369. The dirac notation for states in a linear space is a way of representing a state in a linear space in a way that is free of the choice of coordinate but allows us to insert a particular choice of coordinates easily and to convert from one choice of coordinates to another conveniently. Introduction as a limit properties orthonormal higher dimen. Ollitrault, mecanique quantique relativiste, dea champs, particules. His starting point was to try to factorise the energy momentum relation. In particle physics, the dirac equation is a relativistic wave equation derived by british physicist.
Introduction the steady progress of physics requires for its theoretical formulation a mathematics that gets continually more advanced. Introduction the lorentz dirac equation is an equation of motion. In its free form, or including electromagnetic interactions, it describes all spin1 2 massive particles such as electrons and quarks for which parity is a symmetry. The classical atiyahsinger index formula for dirac operators expresses a certain topological invariant of a closed spin manifold, the socalled a. The dirac equation describes the behaviour of spin12 fermions in relativistic quantum. Dirac 19021984 introduisait en physique mathematique sa celebre fonction. Because the relativity requires to treat time and space on equal footing, it means that the equation. This and some others problem drove dirac to think about another equation of motion. Heaviside, dirac, and staircase functions in several many areas of analysis one encounters discontinuous functions with your first exposure probably coming while studying laplace transforms and their inverses. Bernd thaller ever since its invention in 1929 the dirac equation has played a fundamental role in various areas of modern physics and mathematics. Among other discoveries, he formulated the dirac equation which describes. Solutions to the dirac equation paulidirac representation dirac equation is given by i. Introduction the lorentzdirac equation is an equation of motion.