Symmetry and causality properties of physical fields

摘要

Representations of groups of causality-preserving transformations on locally Minkowskian space-times, by actions on classes of wave functions of designated transformation properties, are analyzed, in extension of the conventional theoretical treatment of free relativistic particles. In particular, the constraints of positivity of the energy and finiteness of propagation velocity are developed, and the concept of mass is explored, within the indicated framework.