The Pauli-Lubanski vector and angular momentum

  • #1
redtree
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TL;DR Summary
I have seen it stated but not proven that in the formula for the Pauli-Lubanski vector, the orbital angular momentum drops out from ##M_{\rho \sigma}## because of the anti-symmetry with the momentum operator, such that it includes only the spin part of the angular momentum. Where can I find an explicit proof of this statement?
Given $$M_{\rho \sigma} = i (x^{\rho} \partial_{\sigma} - x^{\sigma} \partial_{\rho})$$
and $$W^{\mu} = \frac{1}{2} \epsilon^{\mu \nu \rho \sigma} P_{\nu} M_{\rho \sigma}$$

Why does ##W^{\mu}## pick up only the spin part of the total angular momentum?
 
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  • #2
Looks to me like you can just plug in ##M_{\rho \sigma}## and the derivative for ##P_{\nu}## and just compute that ##W_\mu## is zero, as you have defined it (without the spin component). You will just need to appeal to the anti-symmetry of the Levi-Cevita symbol. I see a couple terms with a repeated index in the Levi-Cevita symbol and couple where it gets contracted with symmetric terms. It is about 3 lines of index algebra/calculus.
 

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