The Electromagnetic Coupling in Kemmer-Duffin-Petiau Theory

Abstract

We analyse the electromagnetic coupling in the Kemmer-Duffin-Petiau (KDP) equation. Since the KDP--equation which describes spin-0 and spin-1 bosons is of Dirac-type, we examine some analogies and differences from the Dirac equation. The main difference to the Dirac equation is that the KDP equation contains redundant components. We will show that as a result certain interaction terms in the Hamilton form of the KDP equation do not have a physical meaning and will not affect the calculation of physical observables. We point out that a second order KDP equation derived by Kemmer as an analogy to the second order Dirac equation is of limited physical applicability as (i) it belongs to a class of second order equations which can be derived from the original KDP equation and (ii) it lacks a back-transformation which would allow one to obtain solutions of the KDP equation out of solutions of the second order equation. We therefore suggest a different higher order equation which, as far as the solutions for the wave functions are concerned, is equivalent to the orginal first order KDP wave equation.