Duality and helicity: the photon wave function approach

作者：Elbistan, M.^*; Horvathy, P. A.; Zhang, P. -M.

来源：Physics Letters, Section A: General, Atomic and Solid State Physics , 2017, 381(30): 2375-2379.

DOI：10.1016/j.physleta.2017.05.042

• Electromagnetic duality
• Helicity
• Symmetry and conservation laws
• Wave equations

The photon wave equation proposed in terms of the Riemann-Silberstein vector is derived from a first order Dirac/Weyl-type action principle. It is symmetric w.r.t duality transformations, but the associated Noether quantity vanishes. Replacing the fields by potentials and using instead a quadratic Klein-Gordon type Lagrangian allows us to recover the double-Chem-Simons expression of conserved helicity and is shown to be equivalent to recently proposed alternative frameworks. Applied to the potential-modified theory the Dirac/Weyl-type approach yields again zero conserved charge, whereas the Klein-Gordon-type approach applied to the original setting yields Lipkin's "zilch".

• 出版日期2017-8-13
• 单位中国科学院近代物理研究所