1996/08/26 by P. van Nieuwenhuizen, Peter van Nieuwenhuizen, Andrew Waldron · 1 voice · 6 citations
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Algebraic and Geometric Analysis #Noncommutative and Quantum Gravity Theories #Relativity and Gravitational Theory #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0370-2693(96)01251-8
published as Phys.Lett. B389 (1996) 29-36 · 19 pages, LaTex
arxiv created 1996/08/26 · arxiv published 1996/08/26 · arxiv updated 1996/08/26 · openalex publication_date 1996/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose a continuous Wick rotation for Dirac, Majorana and Weyl spinors from Minkowski spacetime to Euclidean space which treats fermions on the same footing as bosons. The result is a recipe to construct a supersymmetric Euclidean theory from any supersymmetric Minkowski theory. This Wick rotation is identified as a complex Lorentz boost in a five-dimensional space and acts uniformly on bosons and fermions. For Majorana and Weyl spinors our approach is reminiscent of the traditional Osterwalder Schrader approach in which spinors are ``doubled'' but the action is not hermitean. However, for Dirac spinors our work provides a link to the work of Schwinger and Zumino in which hermiticity is maintained but spinors are not doubled. Our work differs from recent work by Mehta since we introduce no external metric and transform only the basic fields.