Abstract
As discussed in the previous chapters, the spinors in the Dirac theory consist of four components. In the nonrelativistic limit, for spinors belonging to positive (negative) energy states, the upper (lower) two components become large compared to the lower (upper) two components [cf. (2.44), (2.72)] . The question arises, whether there exists a representation that reflects this property as a general feature, i.e. also for large velocities of the particles.
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References
This is discussed in more detail in W. Greiner, J. Reinhardt: Quantum Electrodynamics, 2nd ed. (Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg 1994).
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© 2000 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Greiner, W. (2000). The Foldy-Wouthuysen Representation for Free Particles. In: Relativistic Quantum Mechanics. Wave Equations. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04275-5_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-04275-5_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-67457-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-04275-5
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