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Difficulties with massless particles?

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Abstract

Some difficulties with sharp momentum (one-particle) states for massless particles are indicated, in the framework of unitary irreducible representations of the Poincaré group. It is shown that a Poincaré covariant set of such states requires the introduction, in the spatial direction opposite to the point stabilized, of momentum generalized eigenstates which (when the helicity is nonzero) have a nontrivial orbital transformation. The relevance of these generalized momentum eigenstates for massless theories is then shown.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Physique Mathematique, Faculte des Sciences Mirande, BP 138, F-21004, Dijon, France

    M. Flato & D. Sternheimer

  2. Department of Physics, University of California, 90024, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    C. Fronsdal

Authors
  1. M. Flato
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  2. D. Sternheimer
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  3. C. Fronsdal
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Communicated by H. Araki

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Flato, M., Sternheimer, D. & Fronsdal, C. Difficulties with massless particles?. Commun.Math. Phys. 90, 563–573 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01216186

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01216186

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