The Dirac equation in general relativity and the 3+1 formalism

I present a review of the Dirac equation in general relativity. Although the generalization of the Dirac equation to a curved spacetime is well known, it is not usually part of the standard toolkit of techniques known to people working on classical general relativity. Recently, there has been some renewed interest in studying solutions of the Einstein–Dirac system of equations, particularly in the context of the so-called “Dirac stars”. Motivated by this, here I present a review of the Dirac equation in general relativity, starting from Minkowski spacetime, and then considering the Lorentz group and the tetrad formalism in order to generalize this equation to the case of a curved spacetime. I also derive the form of the Dirac equation and its associated stress–energy tensor for the case of the 3+1 formalism of general relativity, which can be useful for the study of the evolution of the Dirac field in a dynamical spacetime.