Spinor and twistor formulations of massless particles with rigidity

Abstract

The 4-dimensional model of a massless particle with rigidity whose Lagrangian is proportional to its world-line curvature is reformulated in terms of spinor and twistor variables. We begin with a first-order Lagrangian that is equivalent to the original Lagrangian proportional to the extrinsic curvature of a particle world-line. The first-order Lagrangian is written in terms of spacetime and spinor variables, leading to a spinor representation of the Lagrangian. Then its corresponding action is expressed in terms of twistor variables, leading to the gauged Shirafuji action.