[Submitted on 26 May 2026]
Projection operator onto spin-S eigenspaces of total and orbital angular momenta
The Frobenius covariant is used to construct a projection operator onto the spin-S eigenspaces associated with the squares of the total and orbital angular momenta. The covariant admits two equivalent representations: as a polynomial in powers of the scalar product of the spin and orbital angular momentum operators, and as a finite expansion in terms of their respective polarization operators. A correspondence is established with Villars' angular momentum projection, used in nuclear structure studies.
- Comments:
- 4 pages
- Subjects:
- Nuclear Theory (nucl-th); Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
- arXiv:
- 2605.27637 [pdf]