3.2 The Dirac Equation 41 space, and in fact we can simply write yi =ioi (Pauli sigma matrices), sothat — {7,77} = -26%. The factor of é in the first line and the minus sign in the second line are purely conventional. The matrices representing the Lorentz algebra are then Si) = Uetikgk (3.24) which we recognize as the two-dimensional representation of the rotation group. Now let us find Dirac matrices “ for four-dimensional Minkowski space. It turns out that these matrices must be at least 4 x 4. (There is no fourth 2x 2 matrix, for example, that anticommutes with the three Pauli sigma matrices.) Further, all 4 x 4 representations of the Dirac algebra are unitarily equivalent.t We thus need only write one explicit realization of the Dirac algebra. One representation, in 2 x 2 block form, is e-(3 ‘) #= (9 a (3.25) This representation is called the Weyl or chiral representation. We will find it an especially convenient choice, and we will use it exclusively throughout. this book. (Be careful, however, since many field theory textbooks choose a different representation, in which 7° is diagonal. Furthermore, books that use chiral representations often make a different choice of sign conventions.) In our representation, the boost and rotation generators are otro __ifo 0 = ibral=-5(5 2s): (3.26) and i kh Sait] =5e"(G a gete azn A four-component field 1} that transforms under boosts and rotations accord- ing to (3.26) and (3.27) is called a Dirac spinor. Note that the rotation gen- erator S'/ is just the three-dimensional spinor transformation matrix (3.24) replicated twice. The boost generators $° are not Hermitian, and thus our implementation of boosts is not unitary (this was also true of the vector rep- resentation (3.18)). In fact the Lorentz group, being “noncompact”, has no faithful, finite-dimensional representations that are unitary. But that does not matter to us, since ~) is not a wavefunction; it is a classical field. This statement and the preceding one follow from the general theory of the representations of the Lorentz group derived in Problem 3.1