Spinors beyond Dirac, Weyl and Majorana: the Flag-Dipoles

Abstract

We recall the Lounesto classification of 1/2-spin spinor fields, based on the vanishing of spinorial bilinear quantities: the classes are the regular spinor fields (i.e. the Dirac field), as well as singular spinor fields, also known as flag-dipole spinor fields, admitting two limiting sub-classes, given by the dipole spinors (i.e. the Weyl spinor) and the flagpole spinors (i.e. the Majorana spinor). We discuss each class in terms of its representatives, with particular emphasis upon the flag-dipole spinor fields.