Thursday, January 29, 2015

Does the lagrangian contain all the information about the representations of the fields in QFT?


Given the Lagrangian density of a theory, are the representations on which the various fields transform uniquely determined?


For example, given the Lagrangian for a real scalar field L=12μφμφ12m2φ2 with (+,,,) Minkowski sign convention, is φ somehow constrained to be a scalar, by the sole fact that it appears in this particular form in the Lagrangian?


As another example: consider the Lagrangian L1=12νAμνAμ+12m2AμAμ, which can also be cast in the form L1=(12μAiμAi12m2AiAi)(12μA0μA012m2A0A0). I've heard[1] that this is the Lagrangian for four massive scalar fields and not that for a massive spin-1 field. Why is that? I understand that it produces a Klein-Gordon equation for each component of the field: (+m2)Aμ=0, but why does this prevent me from considering Aμ a spin-1 massive field?





[1]: From Matthew D. Schwartz's Quantum Field Theory and the Standard Model, p.114:



A natural guess for the Lagrangian for a massive spin-1 field is L=12νAμνAμ+12m2A2μ, where A2μ=AμAμ. Then the equations of motion are (+m2)Aμ=0, which has four propagating modes. In fact, this Lagrangian is not the Lagrangian for a amassive spin-1 field, but the Lagrangian for four massive scalar fields, A0,A1,A2 and A3. That is, we have reduced 4=1111, which is not what we wanted.





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