Spin in the worldline path integral in 2 + 1 dimensions

Abstract

We present a constructive derivation of a worldline path integral for the effective action and the propagator of a Dirac field in 2+1 dimensions, in terms of spacetime and SU(2) paths. After studying some general properties of this representation, we show that the auxiliary gauge-group variable can be integrated, deriving a worldline action depending only on x(τ), the spacetime paths. We then show that the functional integral automatically imposes the constraint x˙2(τ)=1, while there is a spin action, which agrees with the one one should expect for a spin-12 field.