Massless fermion Z decay spin sum
ID: massless-fermion-z-decay-spin-sum
For the Z boson vertex , sum over the three initial polarizations and final fermion spins. The symmetric Dirac trace is . The vector-axial interference is antisymmetric and drops out of the massive vector polarization sum. The longitudinal term drops out by current conservation for massless final particles. Contracting the remaining trace gives the displayed result. The massive-vector spin average divides it by three; two-body Lorentz-invariant phase space then gives per color. These coefficients are twice those used with a vertex prefactor .
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