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  Definition and motivation for Twistors

+ 6 like - 0 dislike
1521 views

What are Twistors? Why are they important?

This particular statement in Wikipedia is intriguing

According to Andrew Hodges, twistor space is useful for conceptualizing the way photons travel through space, using four complex numbers.

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2015-03-23 11:09 (UTC), posted by SE-user Prathyush
asked Sep 23, 2013 in Mathematics by Prathyush (705 points) [ no revision ]
retagged Mar 23, 2015
Possibly relevant: physics.stackexchange.com/q/36359

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2015-03-23 11:09 (UTC), posted by SE-user twistor59

1 Answer

+ 4 like - 0 dislike

Your question can be answered at many levels. I'll keep it simple; I'm not very well versed with the grand picture.

Twistors provide an efficient (and possibly natural) means to encode the kinematics of massless particles and the resulting conformal symmetry. For a nice and clear introduction, check Witten's lecture notes from PiTP 2004: http://www.sns.ias.edu/pitp2/2004/schedule.html

This post imported from StackExchange Physics at 2015-03-23 11:09 (UTC), posted by SE-user Siva
answered Sep 24, 2013 by Siva (720 points) [ no revision ]

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