INTRODUCTION TO 2-SPINORS IN GENERAL RELATIVITY

by Peter O'Donnell

This book deals with 2-spinors in general relativity, beginning by developing spinors in a geometrical way rather than using representation theory, which can be a little abstract. This gives the reader greater physical intuition into the way in which spinors behave. The book concentrates on the algebra and calculus of spinors connected with curved space-time. Many of the well-known tensor fields in general relativity are shown to have spinor counterparts. An analysis of the Lanczos spinor concludes the book, and some of the techniques so far encountered are applied to this. Exercises play an important role throughout and are given at the end of each chapter.

Genres: Physics

204 pages, Hardcover

First published April 3, 2003

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Erickson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read first three chapters (out of four). Excellent physics book to learn the workings of spinor formalism and Newman-Penrose formalism, though many typographical errors in the book. It is very well-guided for beginners, though some of the deeper results (e.g. various spin transformations) we will need other resources. This book is good if one wants to know "how" rather than "why". It is said that Penrose-Rindler's "Spinor and Space-time" is a more extensive and complete complement to this text, as well as relevant journal papers such as those written by Newman and Penrose (1962).