68 Chapter 3 The Dirac Field has polar coordinates 6, , the two-component spinors with spin up and spin down along this axis are a= Gries auy= (“ety Let €* = (€(1),€(|)) for s = 1,2. Also define €* = i097 (€*)*. (3.134) This quantity is the flipped spinor; from the explicit formulae, &* = (&(1), -€(1)- (3.135) The form of the spin reversal relation follows more generally from the identity oo? = 9?(—o*). This equation implies that, if € satisfies n-o€ = +€ for some axis n, then (n+ @)(i07§") = —io?(—n- @)*&* = io (E*) = —(-i07€*). Notice that, with this convention for the spin flip, two successive spin flips return a spin to (—1) times the original state. We now associate the various fermion spin states with these spinors. The electron annihilation operator aj, destroys an electron whose spinor u*(p) contains €*. The positron annihilation operator 6% destroys a positron whose spinor v*(p) contains €*: s(p) — ( VP oe : w(p) = (CC a (3.136) As in Eq, (3.135), we define (a5,—a,), gt = (62, —bh). (3.137) We can now work out the relation between the Dirac spinors u and v and their time reversals. Define p = (p°,—p). This vector satisfies the identity Vp 0" = 0*,/p-o*; to prove this, expand the square root as in (3.49). For some choice of spin and momentum, associated with the Dirac spinor u‘(p), let u*(p) be the spinor with the reversed momentum and flipped spin. These quantities are related by -s¢g) — (VB. 2 (-io&"*)\ _ (-i0? Vp oF €* w@) = Ge ceue,) a fay eee) .(o 0 8/p\]* 1,3 [y8(p)]" --i(4 ) wee =~ [wi(p)]". o Similarly, for v°(p), v= Peo)’: in this relation, v* contains €4*) = —€°,