Brit. ]. Phil. Sci. 40 (1989).

409-412 Printed in Great Britain

DISCUSSION

On the Origin of Spin in Relativity*

There has been some recent discussion in this Journal on the question of the
origin of spin in physics, as to whether it is indeed a consequence of relativity

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theory alone (Peschke [1988], Morrison [1986]. I should like to add a few
comments to this discussion, starting with the remark that this question was
indeed settled by Einstein and Mayer [1932]. What they did was to investigate
the algebra implicit in the theory of relativity, irrespective of any particular law
it may be applied to.
Einstein's and Mayer's investigation was to see what would be the most
primitive (i.e. irreducible) form of the representations of the Poincare group—
that is, the algebraic symmetry group that underlies (the algebraic part of the
logic of the) theory of special relativity. What they found was that as soon as
one removes the space-time reflection transformations from the four-dimen-
sional real representations of the Lorentz group (the group that prescribes how
the components of a four-vector transform, from one inertial frame to any
other, in accordance with special relativity) these representations reduce to the
direct sum of two two-dimensional complex (and Hermitian) representations.
This reduction then yields the irreducible representations of the symmetry
group for the theory of special relativity per se, since this theory prescribes the
covariance of the laws of nature only with respect to the continuous space-
time transformations between inertial reference frames in which one com-
pares the forms of these laws, in accordance with Einstein's principle of
relativity.
The discovery of Einstein and Mayer was then that the basis functions of the
irreducible, two-dimensional representations of the Poincare group are the
two-component spinor variables. Thus, it follows that the most primitive types
offieldvariables with which to represent the laws of nature, if they are to be in
accordance with the principle of special relativity, are the two-component
spinor variables. The appearance of 'spin' in the laws of nature is then a
consequence of the theory of relativity alone.
Of course, it is true that it was Pauli who originally introduced the spin
matrices into the nonrelativistic Schrodinger equation in wave mechanics.
However, this was not more than an ad hoc insertion, designed to reproduce

* I thank the faculty of the Department of Physics, University of Leeds, for their kind hospitality
during a visit in 1988. when this note was prepared.
410 Mendel Sachs
the empirically verified extra degrees of freedom, in yielding for example the
extra spectral lines of hydrogenic atoms, observed in the anomalous Zeeman
effect. However, Pauli's insertion did not explain the spin variables. The
explanation did not come until Dirac discovered that the Klein-Gordon
(second-order) differential equation—covariant under reflections in space and
time as well as the continuous space-time transformations of special
relativity—factorizes into a pair of coupled (first-order) differential equations, in
terms of the spinor variables, when one removes the reflection symmetry
elements from the underlying group of relativity theory.
Recalling this sequence of steps, the Schrodinger prescription,

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E->ihd/dt, p->-i/iV,
in wave mechanics, yields the Klein- Gordon equation from the energy-
momentum relation for a free particle in special relativity. Allowing this
so-constructed operator equation to operate on the matter wave <j> we then
have

(1)

tf> = 0 (2)
2 2 2 2 2 2
where D = (d /3t -V ) and X =m c*/h .
The factorization of the Klein-Gordon equation (2)
(3a)

(3b)

in turn, yields the 'reflected' two-component spinor equations (3ab), in terms

of the two-component spinor variable r] and its reflected spinor x = £>;*, where
e= (j" 1 ) and the asterisk denotes complex conjugation. In eq. (3a), the basis
elements of the first-order differential operator are (T)l = (<70;ak), where a° is
the unit two-dimensional matrix and crk are the three Pauli spin matrices
( k = l . 2, 3).
The operator a^d^ behaves algebraically like a quaternion, and its space-
reflected operator, a^d^ is its quaternion conjugate, whereffp= (<r°; — <rk). From
the commutation properties of the Pauli matrices and the unit matrix it then
follows that substitution of eq. (3b) into eq. (3a) yields the Klein-Gordon
equation (2):

[The coupled spinor field equations (3a) and (3b) could, equivalently, be re-
expressed in terms of time-reflected (rather than space-reflected) quaternion
operators.]
 On the Origin of Spin in Relativity 411
The relativistic covariance of the spinor equations (3ab) implies that
invariants of this formalism in special relativity are n^x and its reflection,
/t>?-scalar functions of the space-time coordinates that are neither even nor
odd with respect to reflections. However, they can always be re-expressed as
the sum of an even part and an odd part, Is that is even (scalar) and I^ that is
odd (pseudoscalar). That is,

Ttx=iMx+xti)+iWx - ztv)=is+ips-
What Dirac did, in effect, in his original formulation of relativistic wave
mechanics, was to recover a formalism that is only even with respect to

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reflections (as with the Klein-Gordon equation), while maintaining the spin
degrees of freedom. He did this by going from the two-component spinor
equations (3) to the (more restrictive) four-component bispinor basis function,

The relativistic invariant of the Dirac bispinor formalism, in turn, is

proportional to Is (above) while there is no counterpart for Ips. This bispinor
formalism is the usually referred to Dirac expression of wave mechanics, for
spin-one-half fields, such as the matter field variables for an electron or a
proton. Nevertheless, it is the pair of two-component spinor equations (3)
(usually identified with Majorana's name) that is irreducible in respect to
special relativity alone. Its origin demonstrates the most general expression of
the energy-momentum relation in wave mechanics for spin-one-half, massive
fields, compatible with the symmetry requirements of the theory of special
relativity, necessarily in terms of a two-component spinor formalism.
However, the main point of this note is the idea that the expression of wave
mechanics is only a special case of the more general result discovered by
Einstein and Mayer—that the irreducible representations of the symmetry
group of special relativity theory imply that the spinor variable is the most
primitive way to express laws of nature that are compatible with Einstein's
principle of special relativity. This result should then apply to all of the physical
laws—from wave mechanics in the elementary particle domain to all of the
other laws, up to the physics of the universe as a whole—that of cosmology.
In conclusion, it should be noted that when one extends the symmetry
group from that of special relativity to that of general relativity, the
geometrical logic of theories of matter (in any domain) changes, but the
algebraic logic does not. Thus in general relativity one still has laws of matter,
most primitively, in terms of spinor and quaternion variables, though in this
case they are mapped in a curved space-time, governed by the rules of
Riemannian geometry, rather than the rules of Euclidean geometry, as in
412 Mendel Sachs
special relativity theory. The latter global extension is discussed in detail in
Sachs [1986].
MENDEL SACHS
Department of Physics and Astronomy
State University of New York at Buffalo

REFERENCES
EINSTEIN, A. and MAYER, W. [1932]: Preuss. Akad. Wiss. Phys. Math. Klass. Sitz., p. 522.

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MORRISON, M. [1986]: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 37, p.101.
SACHS, M. [1986]: Quantum Mechanics from General Relativity, Chapter 4. Reidel
Publishing Co., Dordrecht.
VON PESCHKE, J. [1988]: British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 38, p. 566.