Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2009 / iii / Paper 42 / 4 / c

For two independent left-handed Weyl spinors $\chi$ and $\eta$, a Dirac mass term isThe four-component Dirac field ${\Psi }_D=({\chi }_{\alpha },{\bar{\eta }}^{\dot{\alpha }}{)}^T$ has independent particle and antiparticle degrees of freedom; after a phase redefinition making $m$ real, the same term is $-m{\bar{\Psi }}_D{\Psi }_D$. The two left-handed spinors can carry opposite charges under a conserved U(1) symmetry, $\chi \mapsto e^{iq\omega }\chi$, $\eta \mapsto e^{-iq\omega }\eta$. A gauge-invariant Dirac mass term contracts conjugate gauge group representations.

For one left-handed Weyl spinor, a Majorana mass term instead has the formIts self-contraction need not vanish, by the Weyl spinor bilinear exchange identity. The factor $1/2$ avoids double counting identical fields in variation. The associated four-component Majorana fermion ${\Psi }_M=({\chi }_{\alpha },{\bar{\chi }}^{\dot{\alpha }}{)}^T$ satisfies ${\Psi }_M^c={\Psi }_M$, so its particle is its own antiparticle. A Majorana mass term breaks continuous fermion-number phase symmetry for $\chi$, and is allowed only if its gauge indices admit an invariant symmetric contraction, as for a neutral field or a real gauge group representation. An isolated field of nonzero U(1) charge cannot have it. More generally, the mass matrix of several left-handed Weyl spinors is symmetric, since ${\chi }_i{\chi }_j={\chi }_j{\chi }_i$.