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Toward an understanding of the spin-statistics theorem

 

作者: Ian Duck,   E. C. G. Sudarshan,  

 

期刊: American Journal of Physics  (AIP Available online 1998)
卷期: Volume 66, issue 4  

页码: 284-303

 

ISSN:0002-9505

 

年代: 1998

 

DOI:10.1119/1.18860

 

出版商: American Association of Physics Teachers

 

关键词: 03.65;03.70;10.

 

数据来源: AIP

 

摘要:

We respond to a recent request from Neuenschwander for an elementary proof of the Spin-Statistics Theorem. First, we present a pedagogical discussion of the results for the spin-0 Klein–Gordon field quantized according to Bose–Einstein statistics; and for the spin-12Dirac field quantized according to Fermi–Dirac statistics and the Pauli Exclusion Principle. This discussion is intended to make our paper accessible to students familiar with the matrix solution of the quantum harmonic oscillator. Next, we discuss a number of candidate intuitive proofs and conclude that none of them pass muster. The reasons for their shortcomings are fully discussed. Then we discuss an argument, originally suggested by Sudarshan, which proves the theorem with a minimal set of requirements. Although we use Lorentz invariance in a specific and limited part of the argument, we do not need the full complexity of relativistic quantum field theory. Motivated by our particular use of Lorentz invariance, if we are permitted to elevate the conclusion of flavor symmetry (which we explain in the text) to the status of a postulate, one could recast our proof without any explicit relativistic assumptions, and thus make it applicable even in the nonrelativistic context. Such an argument, presented in the text, sheds some light on why it is that the ordinary Schrödinger field, considered strictly in the nonrelativistic context, seems to be quantizable with either statistics. Finally, an argument starting with ordinary-number valued (commuting), and with Grassmann-valued (anticommuting), oscillators shows in a natural way that these must relativistically embed into Klein–Gordon spin-0 and Dirac spin-12fields, respectively. In this way, the Spin-Statistics Theorem is understood at the expense of admitting the existence of the simplest Grassmann-valued field.

 

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