Second Order Fermions in Gauge Theories

Abstract

The second order formalism for fermions provides a description of fermions that is very similar to that of scalars. We demonstrate that this second order formalism is equivalent to the standard Dirac formalism. We do so in terms of the conventional fermionic Feynman rules. The second order formalism has previously proven useful for the computation of fermion loops, here we describe how the corresponding rules can be applied to the calculation of amplitudes involving external fermions, including tree-level processes and processes with more than one fermion line. We comment on the supersymmetric identities relating fermions and scalars and the associated simplifications to perturbative calculations that are then more transparent.