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In a course on nonrelativistic quantum mechanics you learned about the Pauli exclusion principle2 and its later generalization stating that particles with half integer spins, such as electrons, obey Fermi-Dirac statistics and want to stay apart, while in contrast particles with integer spins, such as photons or pairs of electrons, obey Bose-Einstein statistics and love to stick together. From the microscopic structure of atoms to the macroscopic structure of neutron stars, a dazzling wealth of physical phenomena would be incomprehensible without this spin-statistics rule. Many elements of condensed matter physics, for instance, band structure, Fermi liquid theory, superfluidity, superconductivity, quantum Hall effect, and so on and so forth, are consequences of this rule. (en) |
