On the spring and mass of the Dirac oscillator
The Dirac oscillator is a relativistic generalization of the quantum harmonic oscillator. In particular, the square of the Hamiltonian for the Dirac oscillator yields the Klein-Gordon equation with a potential of the form: (ar(sub 2) + b(L x S)), where a and b are constants. To obtain the Dirac oscillator, a 'minimal substitution' is made in the Dirac equation, where the ordinary derivative is replaced with a covariant derivative. However, an unusual feature of the covariant derivative in this case is that the potential is a non-trivial element of the Clifford algebra. A theory which naturally gives rise to gage potentials which are non-trivial elements of the Clifford algebra is that based on local automorphism invariance. An exact solution of the automorphism gage field equations which reproduces both the potential term and the mass term of the Dirac oscillator is presented.