The Clifford algebra of physical space and Dirac theory

Abstract

The claim found in many textbooks that the Dirac equation cannot be written solely in terms of Pauli matrices is shown to not be completely true. It is only true as long as the term in the usual Dirac factorization of the Klein–Gordon equation is assumed to be the product of a square matrix β and a column matrix ψ. In this paper we show that there is another possibility besides this matrix product, in fact a possibility involving a matrix operation, and show that it leads to another possible expression for the Dirac equation. We show that, behind this other possible factorization is the formalism of the Clifford algebra of physical space. We exploit this fact, and discuss several different aspects of Dirac theory using this formalism. In particular, we show that there are four different possible sets of definitions for the parity, time reversal, and charge conjugation operations for the Dirac equation.