1999/10/01 by Tevian Dray, Dray, Tevian, Corinne A. Manogue +1
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.hep-th/9910010
LaTeX2e, 15 pages, 1 PS figure; to appear in Clifford '99 proceedings
arxiv created 1999/10/04 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
We rewrite the standard 4-dimensional Dirac equation in terms of quaternionic 2-component spinors, leading to a formalism which treats both massive and massless particles on an equal footing. The resulting unified description has the correct particle spectrum to be a generation of leptons, with the correct number of spin/helicity states. Furthermore, precisely three such generations naturally combine into an octonionic description of the 10-dimensional massless Dirac equation, as discussed in previous work.