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://ucris.univie.ac.at/portal/en/publications/semiclassical-analysis-of-dirac-fields-on-curved-spacetime(e6058911-df83-4796-86eb-94a0898ca9f3).html