Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 iii Paper 301 2 g Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
Insert and the result for into the Spinor representation of the Lorentz group. The contraction of two Levi-Civita symbols givesThe matrix exponential of this block diagonal matrix is the stated , so . The plus sign in its exponent follows from both minus signs above; it is tied to the rotation-parameter convention in the PDF.
For a rotation through about , the Pauli matrix has eigenvalues , hence . The spacetime rotation is the identity, whileThis is the spinor sign under a full spatial rotation. A vector returns to itself already at . The comparison concerns the exponentiated Lorentz group representations: a Lie algebra by itself has no distinguished element called a rotation. The sign records the nontrivial lift of this rotation loop to the Spin group.