旋量与时空

This is a companion volume to our introductory work Spinors and space-time, Volume 1 two-spinor calculus and relativistic fields. There weattempted to demonstrate something of the power, utility and elegance of2-spinor techniques in the study of space-time structure and physical fields,and to advocate the viewpoint that spinors may lie closer to the heart of　(even macroscopic) physical laws than the vectors and tensors of the　standard formalism. Here we carry these ideas further and discuss some　important new areas of application. We introduce the theory of twistors　and show how it sheds light on a number of important physical questions,one of the most noteworthy being the structure of energy-momentum/angular momentum of gravitating systems. The illumination that twistor　theory brings to the discussion of such physical problems should lend　further support to the viewpoint of an underlying spinorial structure in　basic physical laws.