Thursday, 18 July 2019

quantum field theory - Why helicity for massless particles is Lorentz invariant?


By definition helicity is projection of spin onto the 3 momentum.


h=JP

where P=(P1,P2,P3) is the momentum operator and J=(J1,J2,J3) the angular operator.


Now under a Lorentz transformation massless particles transform like this: U(Λ)|p,σ=eiθσ|Λp,σ.



As we can see the momentum is changing but the spin not.


Suppose that state |p,σ is a state of helicity σ such that we have
h|p,σ=J3P3|p,σ=σp3|p,σ


But for the state U(Λ)|p,σ=eiθσ|Λp,σ, we would have
h|Λp,σ=σp3eiθσ|Λp,σ|

So for conservation of helicity we would require p3=p3 which is not always the case.


So why do people say that helicity is Lorentz invariant?




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