Translational Inertial Spin Effect with Moving Particles
- 27 April 1964
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review B
- Vol. 134 (2B), B471-B475
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrev.134.b471
Abstract
Although the final conclusion of a preceding paper was incorrect, as we shall explain, the main point remains, and should entail the existence of sui generis recoil effects associated with nonzero values of curl ( is the spin density). These should be observed by testing, not with solids as was previously proposed, but with the probability fluids associated with moving particles; this more refined type of experiment should be able to select, among the set of integrally equivalent energy-momentum tensors, the one describing locally the true or physical energy-momentum flux. In this paper it is shown, by an explicit calculation, that cylindrical type solutions of the extreme relativistic Dirac equation exist with no dependence of the wave function (and thus no component of the momentum) but still with a component of the Dirac probability current; as this conclusion is reached with a dependence of the wave function of strictly the form , there is no question of having to perform a Foldy-Wouthuysen transformation to extract the positive energy contribution (or equivalently, to use the Newton-Wigner position operator). The "transverse inertial spin effect" we predict is locally described by the flux of the Dirac current per time and surface , and corresponds to the local transition probabilities between the dynamical state of the beam and a pointlike localization of the incident particles.
Keywords
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- Translational Inertial Spin EffectPhysical Review B, 1963