A generalized bag-like boundary condition for fields with arbitrary spin. (9th July 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Stokes, Adam; Bennett, Robert
• Is Part Of: New journal of physics. Volume 17:Number 7(2015:Jul.)
• Publication Date: 2015-07-09
• Subjects: Casimir effect -- spinor fields -- bag model; 11.10.-z -- 12.20.-m -- 03.70.+k -- 03.65.Pm; Physics -- Periodicals; Physics; Periodicals; 530.05
• DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/17/7/073012
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1367-2630

Abstract

Abstract: 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- 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- gravitino.