3. Joachim von Peschke, An Optical Interpretation of Spinors

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Volume 12: Pages 221-225, 1999

An Optical Interpretation of Spinors

Joachim von Peschke

Sonnenbühlstr. 20, D78464 Konstanz, Germany

Spinors play a fundamental role in quantum mechanics. Some physicists feel dissatisfied, as spinors are used only as a formal tool; they try to interpret spinors as geometrical objects. More helpful for understanding may be an interpretation based on geometrical optics, especially on an imaging process between two points. Therefore I try to interpret an (elementary) spinor as a light ray chosen from the ray bundle that images, with the help of a spherical lens, a point (maybe infinity) perfectly into a point on the lens surface. Such a spinor can be used to specify the rotational position of the spherical lens, which is a model of the electron. The proposal is not fully worked out.

Keywords: spinors, geometrical optics, electron model, interpretation of quantum mechanics

Received: July 17, 1997; Published online: December 15, 2008