The Wigner Little Group for Photons Is a Projective Subalgebra

TL;DR

This paper uses Geometric Algebra to reinterpret the Wigner little group for photons, revealing it as a projective subalgebra that generalizes to higher dimensions and preserves electromagnetic field invariants.

Contribution

It introduces a mirror-based Geometric Algebra approach to the photon Wigner little group, generalizing it to (1+n)-dimensional Minkowski spaces and linking it to electromagnetic invariants.

Findings

Wigner little group induces a projective geometric algebra as a subalgebra.

The approach generalizes to (1+n)-dimensional Minkowski spaces.

Lightlike transformations preserve electromagnetic field invariants.

Abstract

This paper presents the Geometric Algebra approach to the Wigner little group for photons using the Spacetime Algebra, incorporating a mirror-based view for physical interpretation. The shift from a point-based view to a mirror-based view is a modern movement that allows for a more intuitive representation of geometric and physical entities, with vectors and their higher-grade counterparts viewed as hyperplanes. This reinterpretation simplifies the implementation of homogeneous representations of geometric objects within the Spacetime Algebra and enables a relative view via projective geometry. Then, after utilizing the intrinsic properties of Geometric Algebra, the Wigner little group is seen to induce a projective geometric algebra as a subalgebra of the Spacetime Algebra. However, the dimension-agnostic nature of Geometric Algebra enables the generalization of induced subalgebras to (1+n)-dimensional Minkowski geometric algebras, termed little photon algebras. The lightlike transformations (translations) in these little photon algebras are seen to leave invariant the (pseudo)canonical electromagetic field bivector. Geometrically, this corresponds to Lorentz transformations that do not change the intersection of the spacelike polarization hyperplane with the lightlike wavevector hyperplane while simultaneously not affecting the lightlike wavevector hyperplane. This provides for a framework that unifies the analysis of symmetries and substructures of point-based Geometric Algebra with mirror-based Geometric Algebra.