Spinor

In geometry and physics, spinors /spɪnɔːr/ are elements of a (complex) vector space that can be associated with Euclidean space. Like geometric vectors and more general tensors, spinors transform linearly when the Euclidean space is subjected to a slight (infinitesimal) rotation. However, when a sequence of such small rotations is composed (integrated) to form an overall final rotation, the resulting spinor transformation depends on which sequence of small rotations was used: unlike vectors and tensors, a spinor transforms to its negative when the space is continuously rotated through a complete turn from 0° to 360° (see picture). This property characterizes spinors: spinors can be viewed as the 'square roots' of vectors. Spinors ... provide a linear representation of the group of rotations in a space with any number n {displaystyle n} of dimensions, each spinor having 2 ν {displaystyle 2^{ u }} components where n = 2 ν + 1 {displaystyle n=2 u +1} or 2 ν {displaystyle 2 u } .No one fully understands spinors. Their algebra is formally understood but their general significance is mysterious. In some sense they describe the 'square root' of geometry and, just as understanding the square root of −1 took centuries, the same might be true of spinors. In geometry and physics, spinors /spɪnɔːr/ are elements of a (complex) vector space that can be associated with Euclidean space. Like geometric vectors and more general tensors, spinors transform linearly when the Euclidean space is subjected to a slight (infinitesimal) rotation. However, when a sequence of such small rotations is composed (integrated) to form an overall final rotation, the resulting spinor transformation depends on which sequence of small rotations was used: unlike vectors and tensors, a spinor transforms to its negative when the space is continuously rotated through a complete turn from 0° to 360° (see picture). This property characterizes spinors: spinors can be viewed as the 'square roots' of vectors. It is also possible to associate a substantially similar notion of spinor to Minkowski space in which case the Lorentz transformations of special relativity play the role of rotations. Spinors were introduced in geometry by Élie Cartan in 1913. In the 1920s physicists discovered that spinors are essential to describe the intrinsic angular momentum, or 'spin', of the electron and other subatomic particles. Spinors are characterized by the specific way in which they behave under rotations. They change in different ways depending not just on the overall final rotation, but the details of how that rotation was achieved (by a continuous path in the rotation group). There are two topologically distinguishable classes (homotopy classes) of paths through rotations that result in the same overall rotation, as famously illustrated by the belt trick puzzle (below). These two inequivalent classes yield spinor transformations of opposite sign. The spin group is the group of all rotations keeping track of the class. It doubly covers the rotation group, since each rotation can be obtained in two inequivalent ways as the endpoint of a path. The space of spinors by definition is equipped with a (complex) linear representation of the spin group, meaning that elements of the spin group act as linear transformations on the space of spinors, in a way that genuinely depends on the homotopy class. In mathematical terms, spinors are described by a double-valued projective representation of the rotation group SO(3). Although spinors can be defined purely as elements of a representation space of the spin group (or its Lie algebra of infinitesimal rotations), they are typically defined as elements of a vector space that carries a linear representation of the Clifford algebra. The Clifford algebra is an associative algebra that can be constructed from Euclidean space and its inner product in a basis-independent way. Both the spin group and its Lie algebra are embedded inside the Clifford algebra in a natural way, and in applications the Clifford algebra is often the easiest to work with. After choosing an orthonormal basis of Euclidean space, a representation of the Clifford algebra is generated by gamma matrices, matrices that satisfy a set of canonical anti-commutation relations. The spinors are the column vectors on which these matrices act. In three Euclidean dimensions, for instance, the Pauli spin matrices are a set of gamma matrices, and the two-component complex column vectors on which these matrices act are spinors. However, the particular matrix representation of the Clifford algebra, hence what precisely constitutes a 'column vector' (or spinor), involves the choice of basis and gamma matrices in an essential way. As a representation of the spin group, this realization of spinors as (complex) column vectors will either be irreducible if the dimension is odd, or it will decompose into a pair of so-called 'half-spin' or Weyl representations if the dimension is even. What characterizes spinors and distinguishes them from geometric vectors and other tensors is subtle. Consider applying a rotation to the coordinates of a system. No object in the system itself has moved, only the coordinates have, so there will always be a compensating change in those coordinate values when applied to any object of the system. Geometrical vectors, for example, have components that will undergo the same rotation as the coordinates. More broadly, any tensor associated with the system (for instance, the stress of some medium) also has coordinate descriptions that adjust to compensate for changes to the coordinate system itself. Spinors do not appear at this level of the description of a physical system, when one is concerned only with the properties of a single isolated rotation of the coordinates. Rather, spinors appear when we imagine that instead of a single rotation, the coordinate system is gradually (continuously) rotated between some initial and final configuration. For any of the familiar and intuitive ('tensorial') quantities associated with the system, the transformation law does not depend on the precise details of how the coordinates arrived at their final configuration. Spinors, on the other hand, are constructed in such a way that makes them sensitive to how the gradual rotation of the coordinates arrived there: they exhibit path-dependence. It turns out that, for any final configuration of the coordinates, there are actually two ('topologically') inequivalent gradual (continuous) rotations of the coordinate system that result in this same configuration. This ambiguity is called the homotopy class of the gradual rotation. The belt trick puzzle (shown) famously demonstrates two different rotations, one through an angle of 2π and the other through an angle of 4π, having the same final configurations but different classes. Spinors actually exhibit a sign-reversal that genuinely depends on this homotopy class. This distinguishes them from vectors and other tensors, none of which can feel the class. Spinors can be exhibited as concrete objects using a choice of Cartesian coordinates. In three Euclidean dimensions, for instance, spinors can be constructed by making a choice of Pauli spin matrices corresponding to (angular momenta about) the three coordinate axes. These are 2×2 matrices with complex entries, and the two-component complex column vectors on which these matrices act by matrix multiplication are the spinors. In this case, the spin group is isomorphic to the group of 2×2 unitary matrices with determinant one, which naturally sits inside the matrix algebra. This group acts by conjugation on the real vector space spanned by the Pauli matrices themselves, realizing it as a group of rotations among them, but it also acts on the column vectors (that is, the spinors). More generally, a Clifford algebra can be constructed from any vector space V equipped with a (nondegenerate) quadratic form, such as Euclidean space with its standard dot product or Minkowski space with its standard Lorentz metric. The space of spinors is the space of column vectors with 2 ⌊ dim ⁡ V / 2 ⌋ {displaystyle 2^{lfloor dim V/2 floor }} components. The orthogonal Lie algebra (i.e., the infinitesimal 'rotations') and the spin group associated to the quadratic form are both (canonically) contained in the Clifford algebra, so every Clifford algebra representation also defines a representation of the Lie algebra and the spin group. Depending on the dimension and metric signature, this realization of spinors as column vectors may be irreducible or it may decompose into a pair of so-called 'half-spin' or Weyl representations. When the vector space V is four-dimensional, the algebra is described by the gamma matrices. The space of spinors is formally defined as the fundamental representation of the Clifford algebra. (This may or may not decompose into irreducible representations.) The space of spinors may also be defined as a spin representation of the orthogonal Lie algebra. These spin representations are also characterized as the finite-dimensional projective representations of the special orthogonal group that do not factor through linear representations. Equivalently, a spinor is an element of a finite-dimensional group representation of the spin group on which the center acts non-trivially.