 Spin number of a field

ID: spin-number-of-a-field

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Spin number of a field by

Ciro Santilli 35  Updated 2025-03-25  +Created 1970-01-01

I like relativistic quantum mechanics.

Best mathematical explanation: Section "Spin comes naturally when adding relativity to quantum mechanics".

Physics from Symmetry by Jakob Schwichtenberg (2015) chapter 3.9 "Elementary particles" has an amazing summary of the preceding chapters the spin value has a relation to the representations of the Lorentz group, which encodes the spacetime symmetry that each particle observes. These symmetries can be characterized by small integer numbers:

spin 0: $(0, 0)$ representation
spin half: $(1 / 2, 0) ⨁ (0, 1 / 2)$ representation
spin 1: $(1 / 2, 1 / 2)$ representation

As usual, we don't know why there aren't elementary particles with other spins, as we could construct them.

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