An introduction to the theory of local twistors

Abstract

This paper deals with the formalism of local twistors, which has developed from the twistor algebra, and extends some of the basic twistor concepts to curved space-time. Essentially, the central ideas are to define a twistor space at each point of the spacetime, and to define a covariant derivative so that an operation of local twistor transport is possible; this leads to the definition of a conformally invariant curvature twistor. In an appendix, some conformally invariant spinors are discussed.