Two-spinors and Symmetry Operators

Abstract

Abstract This thesis employs spinor techniques to find what conditions a curved spacetime must satisfy for there to exist a second order symmetry operator for the massive Dirac equation. Conditions are of the form of the existence of a set of Killing spinors satisfying some set of covariant differential equations. These conditions then describe the most general form of such an operator. Partial results for the zeroth and first order are presented and interpreted as well. Computer algebra tools from the Mathematica package suite xAct are used to perform decompositions and simplifications of expressions involving spinors.