Abstract

In this paper, we report on a new approach to relativistic quantum theory. The classical theory is derived from a new implementation of the first two postulates of Einstein, which fixes the proper-time of the physical system of interest for all observers. This approach leads to a new group that we call the proper-time group. We then construct a canonical contact transformation on extended phase space to identify the canonical Hamiltonian associated with the proper-time variable. On quantization we get a new relativistic wave equation for spin 1/2 particles that generalizes the Dirac theory. The Hamiltonian is positive definite so we naturally interpret antiparticles as particles with their proper-time reversed. We show that for the hydrogen atom problem, we get the same fine structure separation. When the proton spin magnetic moment is taken into account, we get the standard hyperfine splitting terms of the Pauli approximation and two additional terms. The first term is small in p-states. It diverges in s-states, and provides more than enough to account for the Lamb-shift when the proton radius is used as a cut off. The last term promises to provide a correction to the hyperfine splitting term. Although incomplete, the general approach offers hope of completely accounting for the hydrogen spectrum as an eigenvalue problem