Scalar and Spinor Fields in Signature Changing Spacetimes

Abstract

The propagation of scalar and spinor fields in a spacetime whose metric changes signature is analyzed. Recent work of Dray et al. on particle production from signature change for a (massless) scalar field is reviewed, and an attempt is made to extend their analysis to the case of a (massless) spin-half field. In contrast to their results for a scalar field, it is shown here---for $SL(2,C)$ spinors---that although there are inequivalent forms of the Dirac equation that can be used to propagate a spinor in a signature changing spacetime, none of these forms gives rise to a conserved inner product on the space of solutions to the field equations.

13 pages (Latex file), UMDGR-93-28

Cited by in corpus (8)

• The Scalar Field Equation in the Presence of Signature Change
• Comment on "Failure of standard conservation laws at a classical change of signature"
• The Construction of Spinor Fields on Manifolds with Smooth Degenerate Metrics
• Casimir effect in a two dimensional signature changing spacetime
• Casimir stress on parallel plates in de Sitter space with signature change
• Casimir effect for a spherical shell in de Sitter spacetime with signature change
• Diffeomorphism algebra of two dimensional free massless scalar field with signature change
• Casimir effect for concentric spheres in de Sitter spacetime with signature change