The mass-shell and gauge-fixing conditions for the free relativistic massive quantum particle

Abstract

Working in the context of the Weyl group, which describes off-mass-shell relativistic particles, we impose “gauge-fixing” constraints involvingR ⁰,R ⁺, andD as matrix element conditions to be satisfied by the on-mass-shell states of a massive particle. We evaluate the matrix elements inp-space using five sets of co-ordinates: (p ²,p), (p ²,p ⁺,p _T ), (p ²,p ⁻,p _T ), (p ²,π), and (p ²,π ⁺,π _T ) where$\pi ^\mu \equiv p^\mu /(p^2 )^{\tfrac{1}{2}}$. We find that, only in the case ofR ⁰ with (p ²,p) coordinates,R ⁺ with (p ²,p ⁺,p _T ) coordinates, andD with (p ², π) or (p ²,π ⁺,π _T ) coordinates, can the condition be satisfied by arbitrary on-mass-shell states. In all other cases, the condition can be satisfied only by states belonging to a subset of subspaces of the on-mass-shell Hilbert space, i.e it forces a violation of the superposition principle. These results constitute thep-space quantum version of Shanmugadhasan's theorem for constrained classical systems which states that there exists, at least locally in phase space, a canonical transformation to a set of variables in which the second-class constraints become canonical pairs equal to zero with the other canonical coordinates independent of the second-class constraints.