Killing spinor

Killing spinor is a term used in mathematics and physics. By the more narrow definition, commonly used in mathematics, the term Killing spinor indicates those twistor spinors which are also eigenspinors of the Dirac operator.[1][2][3] The term is named after Wilhelm Killing.

Another equivalent definition is that Killing spinors are the solutions to the Killing equation for a so-called Killing number.

More formally:[4]

A Killing spinor on a Riemannian spin manifold M is a spinor field \psi which satisfies
\nabla_X\psi=\lambda X\cdot\psi
for all tangent vectors X, where \nabla is the spinor covariant derivative, \cdot is Clifford multiplication and \lambda is a constant, called the Killing number of \psi\,. If \lambda=0 then the spinor is called a parallel spinor.

In physics, Killing spinors are used in supergravity and superstring theory, in particular for finding solutions which preserve some supersymmetry. They are a special kind of spinor field related to Killing vector fields and Killing tensors.

References

  1. ↑ Th. Friedrich (1980). "Der erste Eigenwert des Dirac Operators einer kompakten, Riemannschen Mannigfaltigkeit nichtnegativer Skalarkrümmung". Mathematische Nachrichten 97: 117–146. doi:10.1002/mana.19800970111.
  2. ↑ Th. Friedrich (1989). "On the conformal relation between twistors and Killing spinors". Supplemento dei Rendiconti del Circolo Matematico di Palermo, serie II 22: 59–75.
  3. ↑ A. Lichnerowicz (1987). "Spin manifolds, Killing spinors and the universality of Hijazi inequality". Lett. Math. Phys. 13: 331–334. Bibcode:1987LMaPh..13..331L. doi:10.1007/bf00401162.
  4. ↑ Friedrich, Thomas (2000), Dirac Operators in Riemannian Geometry, American Mathematical Society, pp. 116–117, ISBN 978-0-8218-2055-1

Books

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, August 20, 2014. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.