The initial chapter of the thesis provides a review of Weinberg’s formalism for the derivation of quantum fields. The formalism is extended to allow for the derivation of quantum fields with more than one spin degree of freedom. It is conjectured that it may be possible to construct massive bosonic quantum field theories of any desired spin j that are consistent and unitary at all energies without the need for regulator terms by including j + 1
spin degrees of freedom: j, j - 1, down to j - j. The concept is then demonstrated in two subsequent chapters by the derivation of a quantum field with spin one and spin zero degrees of freedom followed the derivation of a quantum field with spin two, spin one, and spin zero degrees of freedom. Both field theories are found to be consistent and unitary at all energies without the need for regulator terms. The final two chapters are on unrelated topics. The penultimate chapter provides an explicit derivation of quantum fields for massless particles of spin one-half. In the final chapter, a derivation of the free-space Proca and Maxwell equations is provided via a consistent identification of the linear combinations of the classical fields of the (1,0) and (0,1) representations of the orthochronous
Lorentz group.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:canterbury.ac.nz/oai:ir.canterbury.ac.nz:10092/8032 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Schritt, Dimitri |
| Publisher | University of Canterbury. Physics and Astronomy |
| Source Sets | University of Canterbury |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic thesis or dissertation, Text |
| Rights | Copyright Dimitri Schritt, http://library.canterbury.ac.nz/thesis/etheses_copyright.shtml |
| Relation | NZCU |
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