Representation theory in the construction of free quantum field

Abstract

This is mainly a lecture note taken by myself following Weinberg's book, but also contains some corrections to the abuse of mathematical treatment. This article discusses projective unitary representations of Poincare group on the single particle space, multi particle space also known as the Fock space, creation and annilation operators, construction of free quantum fields and the general relation between spin of state and spin of field. Both massive and massless cases are considered. CPT is not considered. The first section briefly reviews the basics of representation theory. This article further points out some of the wrong treatment of mathematics in the book of Weinberg, and reformulates them, including: Wigner's classification needs to be pass to the universal cover via Bargmann's theorem, there is no projective representation of Poincare group on Fock space in general, the Lorentz transformation of fields need to be formulated with representations of the universal covers, Dirac representation is not a linear representation of the Lorentz group. This article also discusses the physical meaning of the state representation and its relation with Schrodinger equation, compare its difference with state representation, and the reason of equations of relativistic quantum mechanics should be understood as a field equation rather than a wave function equation. of equations of relativistic quantum mechanics should be understood as a field equation rather than a wave function equation.