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Chirality distinguishes the two irreducible Weyl representations of the proper Lorentz group. For a massless particle it agrees with helicity up to the particle-antiparticle convention, while a mass term couples opposite chiralities.

The chiral projectors $P_{L,R}=(1\mp {\gamma }^5)/2$ separate the components of a Dirac spinor. The weak charged current selects one chirality. A massive fixed-helicity state generally contains both chiral components; the simple helicity-chirality identification requires the massless limit and a specified particle-antiparticle convention.

A Clifford vacuum is a state annihilated by all the chosen fermionic annihilation operators. In a massless supermultiplet it labels the starting helicity, and applying fermionic raising and lowering operators constructs the remaining states.

The CPT theorem reverses helicity and conjugates internal charges. If a supermultiplet is not mapped into itself, a physical spectrum must also include its conjugate supermultiplet; this can double the irreducible state count.

In a finite-dimensional unitary representation of $ISO(2)$, its two commuting Hermitian translation generators have a finite joint spectrum. Conjugating by every planar rotation rotates that spectrum. A finite set invariant under all rotations contains only the origin, so both generators vanish. An irreducible representation is then a one-dimensional rotation character, giving a helicity state. Nontrivial translations instead require the infinite-dimensional continuous-spin representation. The same argument applies to the physical double cover of this little group.

A four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=4$ supersymmetric gauge theory has one supersymmetric vector multiplet containing a gauge boson, four Weyl spinors, and six real scalar fields in the adjoint group representation. Its massless helicity multiplicities are $1,4,6,4,1$ from helicity $1$ to $-1$.

Four-dimensional $\mathcal{N}=8$ supergravity has eight independent Weyl spinor supercharges. Its supergravity multiplet has helicities from $2$ to $-2$, with multiplicities $1,8,28,56,70,56,28,8,1$.

For either tensor helicity, neutrino free streaming produces the memory equationThe neutrino tensor free-streaming kernel encodes the angular propagation of the perturbation. Energy transferred to neutrino directional anisotropy damps the oscillation amplitude of a gravitational wave after horizon entry. This effect was calculated by Weinberg.

The gravitino is the spin-$3/2$ gauge field of local supersymmetry and the partner of the graviton. A massless four-dimensional gravitino has two physical helicities, $\pm 3/2$; a massive one has four, adding $\pm 1/2$. The super-Higgs mechanism supplies these extra states from the goldstino.

A left-handed massless Weyl spinor has a positive-energy plane wave transforming by $e^{i\alpha /2}$ under a rotation about its momentum. Its particle has helicity $-1/2$. The negative-frequency term multiplies an antiparticle fermionic creation operator, so its corresponding one-particle state carries the conjugate rotation phase and helicity $+1/2$. Thus a left-handed field has one particle and one antiparticle helicity; the right-handed field interchanges the signs. A full massless Dirac field contains both chiral fields and hence both particle helicities.

For $\mathbf{k}=k\hat{z}$, these complex vectors form an orthonormal basis of the transverse plane using the Hermitian inner product. They have opposite phases under rotations about $\hat{z}$, so they describe the two helicity components. Since $\mathbf{e}\cdot m^{(\pm )}=\sin \theta e^{\pm i\phi }/\sqrt{2}$, transverse-vector sources carry only the angular sectors $m=\pm 1$ of spherical harmonics. Streaming by $ik\cos \theta$ preserves $m$ and couples neighboring angular degrees.

For a four-dimensional massless supermultiplet with $\mathcal{N}$ independent supercharges and highest helicity $\lambda$, level $k$ has helicity $\lambda -k/2$ and multiplicity $\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{\mathcal{N}}{k}\right)$. The total is $2^{\mathcal{N}}$ states and the helicity range has width $\mathcal{N}/2$, before any necessary CPT completion of a supermultiplet.

In the standard Weyl representation of the gamma matrices and mostly-minus metric signature, the left chirality component obeys $i({\partial }_t-\mathbf{\sigma }\cdot \nabla ){\chi }_L=0$. A plane wave with $p^0>0$ exists precisely on the massless mass shell $p^0=|\mathbf{p}|$. Its coefficient is a negative helicity eigenspinor. For direction angles $\vartheta ,\phi$, one normalized choice isThe nonzero solution is unique up to overall normalization and phase. Different patches are required for a continuous phase choice over all directions; the direction of zero momentum is undefined.

For a positive-energy Dirac spinor normalized to unit probability and with positive helicity, the left-chiral component has squared weight $(1-\beta )/2$, where $\beta =|\mathbf{p}|/E$ in natural units. Its right-chiral weight is $(1+\beta )/2$; for negative helicity the two are exchanged. In an ultrarelativistic positive-helicity particle, the left-chiral amplitude is suppressed by a mass-to-energy ratio.

For a future null standard momentum $k$, choose Lorentz transformations $L(p)k=p$ and a unitary irreducible representation $d$ of its little group. The Wigner rotation $R(\Lambda ,p)=L(\Lambda p{)}^{-1}\Lambda L(p)$ acts on the internal state. The resulting induced representation acts on wavefunctions with invariant measure $d^{3}p/(2p^0)$. Trivial little-group translations give fixed helicity; nontrivial translations give a continuous-spin representation with infinitely many polarization states.

The massive N=1 vector multiplet contains spins $1,1/2,1/2,0$. Its massless helicity content splits into a CPT-complete vector multiplet with helicities $(1,1/2)$ and $(-1/2,-1)$, and a CPT-complete chiral multiplet with helicities $(1/2,0)$ and $(0,-1/2)$. The longitudinal vector polarization becomes one of the two scalar polarizations; the other comes from the original real scalar. This is the representation-theoretic inverse of the supersymmetric Higgs mechanism.

Boost a massive rest Dirac spinor labelled by $\xi =(1,1{)}^T/\sqrt{2}$ along the third axis and take its massless limit. In the Weyl representation the result is the displayed equal superposition of helicities, not an eigenvector of the fixed transverse rotation generator ${\Sigma }_1/2$. For momentum $(E,0,0,E)$ the positive-energy Hamiltonian is $E{\gamma }^0{\gamma }^3$, which anticommutes with ${\Sigma }_1=\mathrm{diag}({\sigma }_1,{\sigma }_1)$. A nonzero positive-energy solution cannot also be a ${\Sigma }_1$ eigenvector. Thus a transported canonical spin label must be distinguished from literal transverse spin at zero mass; longitudinal helicity remains a good quantum number.