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Wheeler-Feynman dynamics of spin-1/2 particles

Peter Van Alstine

Horace W. Crater

  • Pacific-Sierra Research Corporation, 12340 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, California 90025

  • Department of Physics, University of Tennessee Space Institute, Tullahoma, Tennessee 37388

Phys. Rev. D 33, 1037 – Published 15 February, 1986

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.33.1037

Abstract

By combining a supersymmetric description of a spinning particle in an external field with an appropriate modification of the ‘‘adjunct field’’ of Wheeler and Feynman, we construct a many-time relativistic dynamics for arbitrary numbers of spin-(1/2) and spinless particles in mutual scalar or vector interaction. Quantization of the slow-motion approximation to the dynamics of two spinning particles reproduces the corresponding field-theoretic (Bethe-Salpeter) dynamics through order α4.

References (17)

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  6. One could use our methods to introduce spin-dependent interactions into other versions of relativistic Fokker-Tetrode dynamics, e.g., those that include timelike or spacelike interactions (in addition to light-like ones) and those that do not require that the interactions be symmetric between the particles as in the works of P. Havas, Phys. Rev. 87, 309 (1952); A. Katz, J. Math. Phys. 10, 1929 (1969); H. W. Woodcock and P. Havas, Phys. Rev. D 6, 3422 (1972); H. W. Woodcock, ibid. 17, 1539 (1978).
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  14. We might, for example, adopt the method of Kerner, in J. Math. Phys. 3, 35 (1962).
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  17. The canonical quantization of the spin-dependent versions of Wheeler-Feynman dynamics embodied in our approach [see (20a) and (20b), or (21) and (22)] and its relation to the Breit interaction produced by nonrelativistic quantization of the slow motion, weak potential limit awaits the quantization of the spinless version of Wheeler-Feynman dynamics. Elsewhere, the authors have demonstrated such a connection between a closely related quantum wave equation (two-body Dirac equation) and the Breit interaction [see Ref. 4; Phys. Rev. D 30, 2585 (1984) and unpublished work].

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