A generalized bag-like boundary condition for fields with arbitrary spin. (July 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Stokes, Adam; Bennett, Robert
• Is Part Of: New journal of physics. Volume 17:Number 7(2015:Jul.)
• Page Start: 150
• Page End: 76
• Publication Date: 2015-07
• Subjects: Physics -- Periodicals; Physics; Periodicals; 530.05
• DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/17/7/073012
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1367-2630

Abstract

<abstract> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Boundary conditions (BCs) for the Maxwell and Dirac fields at material surfaces are widely-used and physically well-motivated, but do not appear to have been generalized to deal with higher spin fields. As a result there is no clear prescription as to which BCs should be selected in order to obtain physically-relevant results pertaining to confined higher spin fields. This lack of understanding is significant given that boundary-dependent phenomena are ubiquitous across physics, a prominent example being the Casimir effect. Here, we use the two-spinor calculus formalism to present a unified treatment of BCs routinely employed in the treatment of spin-<inline-formula><tex-math><?CDATA $1/2$?></tex-math><?MML <mml:math> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:math>?><inline-graphic xlink:href="ark:/27927/pgj2j63bv1h" xlink:type="simple" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" /></inline-formula> and spin-1 fields. We then use this unification to obtain a BC that can be applied to massless fields of any spin, including the spin-2 graviton, and its supersymmetric partner the spin-<inline-formula><tex-math><?CDATA $3/2$?></tex-math><?MML <mml:math> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo stretchy="true">/</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:math>?><inline-graphic xlink:href="ark:/27927/pgj2j63bttp" xlink:type="simple" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" /></inline-formula> gravitino.</p> </abstract>