Two-spinor Formulation of First Order Gravity coupled to Dirac Fields

Two-spinor formalism for Einstein Lagrangian is developed. The gravitational field is regarded as a composite object derived from soldering forms. Our formalism is geometrically and globally well-defined and may be used in virtually any 4m-dimensional manifold with arbitrary signature as well as without any stringent topological requirement on space-time, such as parallelizability. Interactions and feedbacks between gravity and spinor fields are considered. As is well known, the Hilbert-Einstein Lagrangian is second order also when expressed in terms of soldering forms. A covariant splitting is then analysed leading to a first order Lagrangian which is recognized to play a fundamental role in the theory of conserved quantities. The splitting and thence the first order Lagrangian depend on a reference spin connection which is physically interpreted as setting the zero level for conserved quantities. A complete and detailed treatment of conserved quantities is then presented.Comment: 16 pages, Plain TE

Bose Symmetry and Chiral Decomposition of 2D Fermionic Determinants

We show in a precise way, either in the fermionic or its bosonized version, that Bose symmetry provides a systematic way to carry out the chiral decomposition of the two dimensional fermionic determinant. Interpreted properly, we show that there is no obstruction of this decomposition to gauge invariance, as is usually claimed. Finally, a new way of interpreting the Polyakov-Wiegman identity is proposed.Comment: LaTex file, 17 pages, Ref.(5) corrected, final version to appear in Nucl. Phys.