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American Journal of Physics

Entropy and Indistinguishability

David Hestenes

Published Jul 1, 1970• 46 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It is argued that the principle of indistinguishability of identical particles is a necessary condition for consistency between experimental and statistical descriptions of a many-particle system. Therefore, it is not a special feature of quantum theory, and its use is perfectly justified in classical statistical mechanics.
DOI
10.1119/1.1976480

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Abstract The empirical rule that systems of identical particles always obey either Bose or Fermi statistics is customarily imposed on the theory by adding it to the axioms of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics, with the result that other statistical behaviors are excluded a priori. A more general approach is to ask what other many-particle statistics are consistent with the indistinguishability of identical particles. This strategy offers a way to discuss possible violations of the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and it leads to some interesting issues related to preparation of states and a superselection rule arising from invariance under the permutation group.