An introduction to spinors

Abstract

We introduce spinors, at a level appropriate for an undergraduate or first year graduate course on relativity, astrophysics or particle physics. The treatment assumes very little mathematical knowledge (mainly just vector analysis and some idea of what a group is). The SU(2)--SO(3) homomorphism is presented in detail. Lorentz transformation, chirality, and the spinor Minkowski metric are introduced. Applications to electromagnetism, parity violation, and to Dirac spinors are presented. A classical form of the Dirac equation is obtained, and the (quantum) prediction that $g=2$ for Dirac particles is presented.

23 pages, 5 figures

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