[Physics] Some Majorana fermion identities

fermionsquantum-field-theory

I have been struggling with these Majorana fermion identities for quite sometime now. I would be grateful if someone can help me with them.

Let $\lambda$,$\theta$ and $\psi$ be $4$-component Majorana fermions. Then apparently the following are true,

  • $(\bar{\theta}\gamma_5 \theta)(\bar{\psi}_L\theta)(\bar{\theta}\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu \psi_L) = \frac{1}{4}(\bar{\theta}\gamma_5 \theta)^2 (\bar{\psi}_L\gamma^\mu \partial_\mu \psi_L)$

  • $(\bar{\theta}\gamma_5 \theta)(\partial _ \mu \bar{\psi}_L \gamma^\mu \theta)(\bar{\theta}\psi_L) = -\frac{1}{4}(\bar{\theta}\gamma_5 \theta)^2 (\partial_\mu \bar{\psi}_L\gamma^\mu \psi_L)$

  • $(\bar{\theta}\gamma _5 \gamma _\mu \theta)(\bar{\psi}_L\theta)(\bar{\theta}\psi_L) = \frac{1}{4} (\bar{\theta}\gamma _5 \theta)^2 (\bar{\psi}\gamma ^\mu \psi)$

  • $(\bar{\theta}\gamma_5 \theta)(\bar{\psi}_L\theta)(\bar{\theta}\lambda) = \frac{1}{4} (\bar{\theta}\gamma _5 \theta)^2 (\bar{\psi}_L\lambda)$

I guess looking at the above that all the 4 have some generic pattern and hence probably require some same key idea which I am missing. Its not clear to me as to how to "pull out" the $\theta$s between the other fermions to outside and then again repack then into a $(\bar{\theta}\gamma_5 \theta)$. I will be happy to get some help regarding the above.

Best Answer

They're more complicated cousins of the Fierz identities,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fierz_identity

The article above also recommends you Okun's book for the general recipe to prove similar identities. Note that all the identities you wrote except for the third one are just normal Fierz identities because the first factor may be cancelled as it appears (once) both on left-hand side and right-hand side.

The fact that it's not trivial to prove those identities doesn't mean that they're not true. If you rewrote them correctly, they are true. You may trust that they're true. In principle, you may verify them by writing the most general values of the spinors $\theta$ and $\psi$ (and $\lambda$, in the last case) - in terms of four complex components each (reduced to two complex by the Majorana condition) - and by calculating the explicit values of the products of the inner products. The identities above will hold. It's kind of inevitable that some identities of a similar form hold because there are just four components in each variable and the number of monomials of the right degree in those components is limited and may be therefore written in different ways.

Spinor identities may be annoyingly technical, especially if one deals with higher dimensions or extended supersymmetry.

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