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The construction of spinor fields on manifolds with smooth degenerate metrics

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
  • Jörg Schray
  • Tevian Dray
  • Corinne A. Manogue
  • Robin Tucker
  • Charles Wang
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1996
<mark>Journal</mark>Journal of Mathematical Physics
Issue number8
Volume37
Number of pages16
Pages (from-to)3882-3897
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

We examine some of the subtleties inherent in formulating a theory of spinors on a manifold with a smooth degenerate metric. We concentrate on the case where the metric is singular on a hypersurface that partitions the manifold into Lorentzian and Euclidean domains. We introduce the notion of a complex spinor fibration to make precise the meaning of continuity of a spinor field and give an express‐ ion for the components of a local spinor connection that is valid in the absence of a frame of local orthonormal vectors. These considerations enable one to construct a Dirac equation for the discussion of the behavior of spinors in the vicinity of the metric degeneracy. We conclude that the theory contains more freedom than the spacetime Dirac theory and we discuss some of the implications of this for the continuity of conserved currents.