48 Chapter 3 The Dirac Field a massless particle Eq. (3.57) is trivial, so we must write the normalization condition in the form of (3.55). Let us summarize our discussion so far. The general solution of the Dirac equation can be written as a linear combination of plane waves. The positive- frequency waves are of the form va) =u(pjeP*, pp? =m, p> 0. (3.58) There are two linearly independent solutions for u(p), u'(p) = a) s=1,2 (3.59) which we normalize according to '(p)u®(p) =2mé" —or_~—ut(p)u®(p) = 2Eps”’. (3.60) In exactly the same way, we can find the negative-frequency solutions: u(z)=v(pje??, pr =m?, pp? > 0. (3.61) (Note that we have chosen to put the + sign into the exponential, rather than having p® < 0.) There are two linearly independent solutions for v(p), v°(p) = ae s=1,2 (3.62) where 7° is another basis of two-component spinors. These solutions are nor- malized according to #(p)v*(p) = —2m6"*—or_—vt(p)u"(p) = +2B pb". (3.63) The w’s and v’s are also orthogonal to each other: a" (p)v* (p) = 0" (p)u*(p) = 0. (3.64) Be careful, since u”!(p)v*(p) # 0 and v"!(p)u*(p) 4 0. However, note that ul (p)v*(~p) = 0" (-p)u’(p) = 0, (3.65) where we have changed the sign of the 3-momentum in one factor of each spinor product. Spin Sums In evaluating Feynman diagrams, we will often wish to sum over the polar- ization states of a fermion. We can derive the relevant completeness relations with a simple calculation: Eww) =D (Pegg) OVER eve)