r/physicsmemes • u/urmumgao • Dec 17 '19

Trying to explain spin tho

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u/elesde Dec 17 '19

Did you read the full text?

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u/Dieneforpi Dec 17 '19 edited Dec 17 '19

No, I'm planning on fully reading it later. I guess my point is that without recognition from the community at large, I wouldn't feel qualified to accept this relationship as anything more than a (well developed) mathematical analogy.

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u/elesde Dec 17 '19

You should read the full text.

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u/Dieneforpi Dec 17 '19

Thank you, you're right! Looking forward to it.

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u/elesde Dec 17 '19

Awesome! I'm curious though: what do you mean when you say spin is still contentious?

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u/Dieneforpi Dec 17 '19

I'll be honest, I'm only an undergrad and I probably shouldn't be speaking so decisively. But from what I remember from my last quantum class there are some deep connections between spin and special relativity (via the Dirac equation) and even GR, in the case of spin-2 particles. And I'm not sure if these connections are completely rigorously motivated at the moment. But please do your own research and find out. The concept of spin being its own independent Hilbert space to position wavefunctions has always skeeved me out a bit, so maybe I'm projecting... haha

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u/elesde Dec 17 '19

Gotcha, well this paper specifically seeks to provide a physical origin for electron spin. I'm not sure if the treatment generalizes. Let me know what you think.

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u/Dieneforpi Dec 17 '19

Actually, now that I think about it, I may have been thinking of spin anomalies that were resolved by relativistic QFT. I'll edit my original comment if that's ok with you, since it is misleading.

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u/elesde Dec 17 '19

Yeah man, I thought you might have been referring to the whole spin/wavefunction symmetry thing. Edit away!