A Clifford Bundle Approach to the Wave Equation of a Spin 1/2 Fermion in the de Sitter Manifold

Abstract

In this paper we give a Clifford bundle motivated approach to the wave equation of a free spin $1/2$ fermion in the de Sitter manifold, a brane with topology $M=\mathrm{S0}(4,1)/\mathrm{S0}(3,1)$ living in the bulk spacetime $\mathbb{R}^{4,1}=(\mathring{M}=\mathbb{R}^{5},\boldsymbol{\mathring{g}})$ and equipped with a metric field $\boldsymbol{g:=-i}^{\ast}\boldsymbol{\mathring{g}%}$ with $\boldsymbol{i}:M\rightarrow\mathring{M}$ being the inclusion map. To obtain the analog of Dirac equation in Minkowski spacetime in the structure $\mathring{M}$ we appropriately factorize the two Casimir invariants $C_{1}$ and $C_{2}$ of the Lie algebra of the de Sitter group using the constraint given in the linearization of $C_{2}$ as input to linearize $C_{1}$. In this way we obtain an equation that we called \textbf{DHESS1,}which in previous studies by other authors was simply postulated.$.$Next we derive a wave equation (called \textbf{DHESS2}) for a free spin $1/2$ fermion in the de Sitter manifold using a heuristic argument which is an obvious generalization of a heuristic argument (described in detail in Appendix D) permitting a derivation of the Dirac equation in Minkowski spacetime and which shows that such famous equation express nothing more than the fact that the momentum of a free particle is a constant vector field over timelike \ integral curves of a given velocity field. It is a remarkable fact that \textbf{DHESS1}and \textbf{DHESS2}\ coincide. One of the main ingredients in our paper is the use of the concept of Dirac-Hestenes spinor fields. Appendices B and C recall this concept and its relation with covariant Dirac spinor fields usualy used by physicists.