The higher spin Dirac operators

Abstract

There is a certain family of conformally invariant first order elliptic operators on Riemannian spin manifold which include Dirac operator as its first and simplest member. Their general definition is given and their basic properties are described. A special attention is paid to the Rarita-Schwinger operator the second simplest operator in the row. Its basic properties are described in more details. In the last part indices of discussed operators are computed.