Semiclassical analysis of Dirac fields on curved spacetime

Author(s)
Marius A. Oancea, Achal Kumar
Abstract

We present a semiclassical analysis for Dirac fields on an arbitrary spacetime background and in the presence of a fixed electromagnetic field. Our approach is based on a Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin approximation, and the results are analyzed at leading and next-to-leading order in the small expansion parameter ℏ. Taking into account the spin-orbit coupling between the internal and external degrees of freedom of wave packets, we derive effective ray equations with spin-dependent terms. These equations describe the gravitational spin Hall effect of localized Dirac wave packets. We treat both massive and massless Dirac fields and show how a covariantly defined Berry connection and the associated Berry curvature govern the semiclassical dynamics. The gravitational spin Hall equations are shown to be particular cases of the Mathisson-Papapetrou equations for spinning objects.

Organisation(s)
Gravitational Physics
External organisation(s)
Indian Institute of Science
Journal
Physical Review D
Volume
107
No. of pages
25
ISSN
2470-0010
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.107.044029
Publication date
02-2023
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103036 Theoretical physics, 103019 Mathematical physics
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/semiclassical-analysis-of-dirac-fields-on-curved-spacetime(e6058911-df83-4796-86eb-94a0898ca9f3).html