Angular momentum conservation law in light-front quantum field theory

Abstract

We prove the Lorentz invariance of the angular momentum conservation law and the helicity sum rule for relativistic composite systems in the light-front formulation. We explicitly show that $j^3$, the $z$-component of the angular momentum remains unchanged under Lorentz transformations generated by the light-front kinematical boost operators. The invariance of $j^3$ under Lorentz transformations is a feature unique to the front form. Applying the Lorentz invariance of the angular quantum number in the front form, we obtain a selection rule for the orbital angular momentum which can be used to eliminate certain interaction vertices in QED and QCD. We also generalize the selection rule to any renormalizable theory and show that there exists an upper bound on the change of orbital angular momentum in scattering processes at any fixed order in perturbation theory.