Quantum statistics, identical particles and correlations

Wei-Tao Liu, Wei Wu, Ping‐Xing Chen +2 more

According to the identity principle in quantum theory, states of a system consisted of identical particles should maintain unchanged under interchanging between two of the particles. The whole wavefunction should be symmetrized or antisymmetrized. This leads to statistical correlations between particles, which exhibit observable effects. We design an experiment to directly observe such effects for bosons. The experiment is performed with two photons. The effect of statistical correlations is clearly observed when the wavepackets of two photons are completely overlapped, and this effect varies with the degree of overlapping. The results of our experiment substantiate the statistical correlation in a simple way. Experiment reported here can also be regarded as another kind of two-photon Hong-Ou-Mandel interference, occurs in the polarization degree of freedom of photon.

Fabrizio Buscemi, Paolo Bordone

We describe an efficient theoretical criterion suitable for the evaluation of the tripartite entanglement of any mixed three-boson or three-fermion state, based on the notion of the entanglement of particles for bipartite systems of identical particles. Our approach allows one to quantify the accessible number of quantum correlations in the systems without any violation of the local particle number superselection rule. A generalization of the tripartite negativity is here applied to some correlated systems including the continuous-time quantum walks of identical particles (for both bosons and fermions) and compared with other criteria recently proposed in the literature. Our results show the dependence of the entanglement dynamics upon the quantum statistics: The bosonic bunching results in a low number of quantum correlations while Fermi-Dirac statistics allows for higher values of the entanglement.

Elliot W. Montroll, John Ward

Ana Marı́a Cetto, Luis de la Peña

The connection between the intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of particles and quantum statistics is established by considering the response of identical particles to a common background radiation field. For this purpose, the Hamiltonian analysis previously performed in stochastic electrodynamics to derive the quantum description of a one-particle system is extended to a system of two identical bound particles subject to the same field. Depending on the relative phase of the response of the particles to a common field mode, two types of particles are distinguished by their symmetry or antisymmetry with respect to particle exchange. While any number of identical particles responding in phase can occupy the same energy state, there can only be two particles responding in antiphase. The calculation of bipartite correlations between the response functions reveals maximum entanglement as a consequence of the parallel response of the particles to the common field. The introduction of an internal rotation parameter leads to a direct link between spin and statistics and to a physical rationale for the Pauli exclusion principle.

Matteo Morganti