[Physics] Is Angular Momentum truly fundamental

angular momentumclassical-mechanicsquantum mechanicsquantum-spin

This may seem like a slightly trite question, but it is one that has long intrigued me.

Since I formally learned classical (Newtonian) mechanics, it has often struck me that angular momentum (and generally rotational dynamics) can be fully derived from normal (linear) momentum and dynamics. Simply by considering circular motion of a point mass and introducing new quantities, it seems one can describe and explain angular momentum fully without any new postulates. In this sense, I am lead to believe only ordinary momentum and dynamics are fundamental to mechanics, with rotational stuff effectively being a corollary.

Then at a later point I learned quantum mechanics. Alright, so orbital angular momentum does not really disturb my picture of the origin/fundamentality, but when we consider the concept of spin, this introduces a problem in this proposed (philosophical) understanding. Spin is apparently intrinsic angular momentum; that is, it applies to a point particle. Something can possess angular momentum that is not actually moving/rotating – a concept that does not exist in classical mechanics! Does this imply that angular momentum is in fact a fundamental quantity, intrinsic to the universe in some sense?

It somewhat bothers me that that fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks can possess their own angular momentum (spin), when otherwise angular momentum/rotational dynamics would fall out quite naturally from normal (linear) mechanics. There are of course some fringe theories that propose that even these so-called fundamental particles are composite, but at the moment physicists widely accept the concept of intrinsic angular momentum. In any case, can this dilemma be resolved, or do we simply have to extend our framework of fundamental quantities?

Best Answer

Note As David pointed out, it's better to distinguish between generic angular momentum and orbital angular momentum. The first concept is more general and includes spin while the second one is (as the name suggests) just about orbiting. There is also the concept of total angular momentum which is the quantity that is really conserved in systems with rotational symmetry. But in the absence of spin it coincides with orbital angular momentum. This is the situation I analyze in the first paragraph.


Angular momentum is fundamental. Why? Noether's theorem tells us that the symmetry of the system (in this case space-time) leads to the conservation of some quantity (momentum for translation, orbital angular momentum for rotation). Now, as it happens, Euclidean space is both translation and rotation invariant in compatible manner, so these concepts are related and it can appear that you can derive one from the other. But there might exist space-time that is translation but not rotation invariant and vice versa. In such a space-time you wouldn't get a relation between orbital angular momentum and momentum.

Now, to address the spin. Again, it is a result of some symmetry. But in this case the symmetry arises because of Wigner's correspondence between particles and irreducible representations of the Poincaré group which is the symmetry group of the Minkowski space-time. This correspondence tells us that massive particles are classified by their mass and spin. But spin is not orbital angular momentum! The spin corresponds to group $Spin(3) \cong SU(2)$ which is a double cover of $SO(3)$ (rotational symmetry of three-dimensional Euclidean space). So this is a completely different concept that is only superficially similar and can't really be directly compared with orbital angular momentum. One way to see this is that spin can be a half-integer, but orbital angular momentum must always be an integer.

So to summarize:

  • orbital angular momentum is a classical concept that arises in any space-time with rotational symmetry.
  • spin is a concept that comes from quantum field theory built on the Minkowski space-time. The same concept also works for classical field theory, but there we don't have a clear correspondence with particles, so I omitted this case.

Addition for the curious

As Eric has pointed out, there is more than just a superficial similarity between orbital angular momentum and spin. To illustrate the connection, it's useful to consider the question of how particle's properties transform under the change of coordinates (recall that conservation of total angular momentum arises because of the invariance to the change of coordinates that corresponds to rotation). Let us proceed in a little bit more generality and consider any transformation $\Lambda$ from the Lorentz group. Let us have a field $V^a(x^{\mu})$ that transforms in matrix representation ${S^a}_b (\Lambda)$ of the Lorentz group. Thanks to Wigner we know this corresponds to some particle; e.g. it could be scalar (like Higgs), bispinor (like electron) or vector (like Z boson). Its transformation properties under the element ${\Lambda^{\mu}}_{\nu}$ are then determined by (using Einstein summation convention)

$$ V'^a ({\Lambda^{\mu}}_{\nu} x^{\nu}) = {S^a}_b(\Lambda) V^b (x^{\mu}) $$

From this one can at least intuitively see the relation between the properties of the space-time ($\Lambda$) and the particle ($S$). To return to the original question: $\Lambda$ contains information about the orbital angular momentum and $S$ contains information about the spin. So the two are connected but not in a trivial way. In particular, I don't think it's very useful to imagine spin as the actual spinning of the particle (contrary to the terminology). But of course anyone is free to imagine whatever they feel helps them grasp the theory better.

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