The electromagnetic coupling in Kemmer-Duffin-Petiau theory

We analyze the electromagnetic coupling in the Kemmer-Duffin-Petiau (KDP) equation. Since the KDP equation which describes spin-0 and spin-1 bosons is of Dirac type, we examine some analogies with and differences from the Dirac equation. The main difference with the Dirac equation is that the KDP equation contains redundant components. We will show that as a result certain interaction terms in the Hamilton form of the KDP equation do not have a physical meaning and will not affect the calculation of physical observables. We point out that a second order KDP equation derived by Kemmer as an analogy to the second order Dirac equation is of limited physical applicability as (i) it belongs to a class of second order equations which can be derived from the original KDP equation and (ii) it lacks a back-transformation which would allow one to obtain solutions of the KDP equation out of solutions of the second order equation. © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.