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Physical Review Research

Reply to “Comment on ‘Nondispersive analytical solutions to the Dirac equation’ ”

Andre G. Campos, Renán Cabrera

Published Jul 6, 2020• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A new method was developed to solve the Dirac equation and used to find analytical solutions for time-dependent electromagnetic fields that translate a given Dirac spinor along any desired trajectory in the $x\text{\ensuremath{-}}y$ plane without distortion. As is well known, negative energy solutions describing antiparticles play a prominent role in the Dirac theory of the electron, and a separation of the part of the wave function describing only electrons from the full solutions often needs to be done. Here, we clarify how the aforementioned separation is done, which is not clear in our recent publication [Campos and Cabrera, Phys. Rev. Research 2, 013051 (2020)].

DOI
10.1103/physrevresearch.2.038002

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Comment on “Nondispersive analytical solutions to the Dirac equation”

Iwo Białynicki‐Birula, Zofia Białynicka-Birula

In our Comment we question the validity of the claim made by Campos and Cabrera [Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 013051 (2020)] that their solutions of the Dirac equation in an external time-dependent electromagnetic field describe beams of electrons. In every time-dependent field, no matter how weak, which has an infinite time duration, there is continuous electron-positron pair creation and annihilation. Without the proper accounting for these processes, the mathematical solutions of the Dirac equation are not directly applicable to realistic physical situations. In particular, the time evolution of the average values $\ensuremath{\langle}x\ensuremath{\rangle}$ and $\ensuremath{\langle}y\ensuremath{\rangle}$ does not describe the electron trajectory but the motion of some combination of the electron and positron charge distributions with pathological properties (zitterbewegung).

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Comment on “Solution of the Schrödinger equation for the time-dependent linear potential”

Jarosław H. Bauer

It is shown that the wave function recently found by Guedes [Phys. Rev. A 63, 034102 (2001)] is a special case of the well-known Volkov solution to the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation describing a nonrelativistic charged particle moving in an electromagnetic field.

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We set up the Maxwell's equations and subsequently the classical wave equations for the electromagnetic waves which together with their generating source, an oscillatory charge of zero rest mass in general travelling, make up a particle travelling similarly as the source at velocity ν in the field of an external scalar and vector potentials. The direct solutions in constant external field are Doppler-displaced plane waves propagating at the velocity of light c ; at the de Broglie wavelength scale and expressed in terms of the dynamically equivalent and appropriate geometric mean wave variables, these render as functions identical to the space-time functions of a corresponding Dirac spinor, and in turn identical to de Broglie phase waves previously obtained from explicit superposition. For two spin-half particles of a common set of space-time functions constrained with antisymmetric spin functions as follows the Pauli principle for same charges and as separately indirectly induced based on experiment for opposite charges, the complete wave functions are identical to the Dirac spinor. The back-substitution of the so explicitly determined complete wave functions in the corresponding classical wave equations of the two particles, subjected further to reductions appropriate for the stationary-state particle motion and to rotation invariance when in three dimensions, give a Dirac equation set; the procedure and conclusion are directly extendible to arbitrarily varying potentials by use of the Furious theorem and to particle motions in three dimensions by virtue of the characteristics of de Broglie particle motion. Through the derivation of the Dirac equation, the study hopes to lend insight into the connections between the Dirac wave functions and the electrodynamic components of simple particles under the government by the well established basic laws of electrodynamics.

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By a canonical transformation on the Dirac Hamiltonian for a free particle, a representation of the Dirac theory is obtained in which positive and negative energy states are separately represented by two-component wave functions. Playing an important role in the new representation are new operators for position and spin of the particle which are physically distinct from these operators in the conventional representation. The components of the time derivative of the new position operator all commute and have for eigenvalues all values between $\ensuremath{-}c$ and $c$. The new spin operator is a constant of the motion unlike the spin operator in the conventional representation. By a comparison of the new Hamiltonian with the non-relativistic Pauli-Hamiltonian for particles of spin \textonehalf{}, one finds that it is these new operators rather than the conventional ones which pass over into the position and spin operators in the Pauli theory in the non-relativistic limit. The transformation of the new representation is also made in the case of interaction of the particle with an external electromagnetic field. In this way the proper non-relativistic Hamiltonian (essentially the Pauli-Hamiltonian) is obtained in the non-relativistic limit. The same methods may be applied to a Dirac particle interacting with any type of external field (various meson fields, for example) and this allows one to find the proper non-relativistic Hamiltonian in each such case. Some light is cast on the question of why a Dirac electron shows some properties characteristic of a particle of finite extension by an examination of the relationship between the new and the conventional position operators.

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Relativistic dynamical inversion in manifestly covariant form

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Reply to “Comment on ‘Solution of the Schrödinger equation for the time-dependent linear potential’ ”

I. Guedes

In this reply I discuss further the misconception in my paper [Phys. Rev. A 63, 034102 (2001)] related to the solution of the Schr\"odinger equation for a particle in a time-dependent linear potential.

Physical Review A•Jul 8, 2003•18 citations
A new method was developed to solve the Dirac equation and used to find analytical solutions for time-dependent electromagnetic fields that translate a given Dirac spinor along any desired trajectory in the x\ensuremath-yx\text{\ensuremath{-}}yx\ensuremath-y plane without distortion. As is well known, negative energy solutions describing antiparticles play a prominent role in the Dirac theory of the electron, and a separation of the part of the wave function describing only electrons from the full solutions often needs to be done. Here, we clarify how the aforementioned separation is done, which is not clear in our recent publication [Campos and Cabrera, Phys. Rev. Research 2, 013051 (2020)].
In our Comment we question the validity of the claim made by Campos and Cabrera [Phys. Rev. Res. 2, 013051 (2020)] that their solutions of the Dirac equation in an external time-dependent electromagnetic field describe beams of electrons. In every time-dependent field, no matter how weak, which has an infinite time duration, there is continuous electron-positron pair creation and annihilation. Without the proper accounting for these processes, the mathematical solutions of the Dirac equation are not directly applicable to realistic physical situations. In particular, the time evolution of the average values $\ensuremath{\langle}x\ensuremath{\rangle}$ and $\ensuremath{\langle}y\ensuremath{\rangle}$ does not describe the electron trajectory but the motion of some combination of the electron and positron charge distributions with pathological properties (zitterbewegung).
We set up the Maxwell's equations and subsequently the classical wave equations for the electromagnetic waves which together with their generating source, an oscillatory charge of zero rest mass in general travelling, make up a particle travelling similarly as the source at velocity ν in the field of an external scalar and vector potentials. The direct solutions in constant external field are Doppler-displaced plane waves propagating at the velocity of light c ; at the de Broglie wavelength scale and expressed in terms of the dynamically equivalent and appropriate geometric mean wave variables, these render as functions identical to the space-time functions of a corresponding Dirac spinor, and in turn identical to de Broglie phase waves previously obtained from explicit superposition. For two spin-half particles of a common set of space-time functions constrained with antisymmetric spin functions as follows the Pauli principle for same charges and as separately indirectly induced based on experiment for opposite charges, the complete wave functions are identical to the Dirac spinor. The back-substitution of the so explicitly determined complete wave functions in the corresponding classical wave equations of the two particles, subjected further to reductions appropriate for the stationary-state particle motion and to rotation invariance when in three dimensions, give a Dirac equation set; the procedure and conclusion are directly extendible to arbitrarily varying potentials by use of the Furious theorem and to particle motions in three dimensions by virtue of the characteristics of de Broglie particle motion. Through the derivation of the Dirac equation, the study hopes to lend insight into the connections between the Dirac wave functions and the electrodynamic components of simple particles under the government by the well established basic laws of electrodynamics.
By a canonical transformation on the Dirac Hamiltonian for a free particle, a representation of the Dirac theory is obtained in which positive and negative energy states are separately represented by two-component wave functions. Playing an important role in the new representation are new operators for position and spin of the particle which are physically distinct from these operators in the conventional representation. The components of the time derivative of the new position operator all commute and have for eigenvalues all values between $\ensuremath{-}c$ and ccc. The new spin operator is a constant of the motion unlike the spin operator in the conventional representation. By a comparison of the new Hamiltonian with the non-relativistic Pauli-Hamiltonian for particles of spin \textonehalf{}, one finds that it is these new operators rather than the conventional ones which pass over into the position and spin operators in the Pauli theory in the non-relativistic limit. The transformation of the new representation is also made in the case of interaction of the particle with an external electromagnetic field. In this way the proper non-relativistic Hamiltonian (essentially the Pauli-Hamiltonian) is obtained in the non-relativistic limit. The same methods may be applied to a Dirac particle interacting with any type of external field (various meson fields, for example) and this allows one to find the proper non-relativistic Hamiltonian in each such case. Some light is cast on the question of why a Dirac electron shows some properties characteristic of a particle of finite extension by an examination of the relationship between the new and the conventional position operators.
The relativistic dynamical inversion technique, a novel tool for finding analytical solutions to the Dirac equation, is written in explicitly covariant form. It is then shown how the technique can be used to make a change from Cartesian to spherical coordinates of a given Dirac spinor. Moreover, the most remarkable feature of the method presented here, which is the ease of performing a nontrivial change of reference frames, is demonstrated. Such a feature constitutes a potentially powerful tool for finding novel solutions to the Dirac equation. Furthermore, a whole family of normalizable analytic solutions to the Dirac equation is constructed. More specifically, we find exact solutions for the case of a Dirac electron in the presence of a magnetic field as well as a solution comprising a combination of a spherically symmetric electric field and magnetic fields. These solutions shed light on the possibility of separating the positive- and negative-energy parts of localized Dirac spinors in the presence as well as in the absence of magnetic fields. The presented solutions provide an illustration of the connection between the geometrical properties of the spinor and spin-orbit coupling for normalizable spinorial wave functions.