A new approach to the representation of the Lorentz group on the spinors

Imposition of a triple product form of the canonical anticommutation relations on the natural basis defines a triple product making complex n-space into a Cartan factor of type 4. This Jordan structure is used to construct 3- and 4-dimensional representations of the Lorentz group corresponding respectively to the relativistic transformations of the electromagnetic field and the Lorentz space-time transformations. The self-adjoint part of the latter is a reducible spin 1/2 representation which gives rise to a spin 1 representation in the space of determinant preserving maps. This suggests that the spin factor of dimension 4 can be used to represent the two types of elementary particles in nature.

(This paper has appeared in Foundations of Physics 31 (2001), 1733-1766)


Yaakov Friedman <friedman@avoda.jct.ac.il>

Bernard Russo <brusso@math.uci.edu>