On the model of a classical relativistic particle of constant and universal mass and spin

Abstract

The deformation of the classical action for a free relativistic particle recently suggested by A. Staruszkiewicz gives rise to a spin structure which constrains the values of the invariant mass and the invariant spin to be the same for any solution of the equations of motion. We prove that both these Casimir invariants, the square of the four-momentum vector and the square of the Pauli-Lubański pseudo-vector, preserve the same fixed values even in the presence of an arbitrary external electromagnetic field. In the "free" case, in the centre of mass reference frame, the particle moves along a circle of fixed radius. In a homogeneous magnetic field, a number of rotational "states" is possible with frequencies slightly different from the cyclotron frequency, and "phase-like" transitions with spin flops occure at some critical value of the particle's three-momentum. In the last section, the article of Kuzenko, Lyakhovich and Segal (1994) in which, in fact, an equivalent model had been proposed and elaborated, is briefly reviewed and compared with Staruszkiewicz's approach and our results.