Wolfgang Pauli and the Exclusion Principle

Michela Massimi

Ilya G. Kaplan

Paul O’Hara, András Kovács

S. Brandt

Abstract The exclusion principle is one of the most far-reaching theorems in physics. In a telegram to the Nobel committee, quoted in [1], Einstein wrote: ‘Nominate Wolfgang Pauli for physics prize stop his contributions to modern quantum theory consisting of so-called Pauli or exclusion principle became fundamental part of modern physics being independent from other basic axioms of that theory stop Albert Einstein.’ It is interesting to note that quantum mechanics, the theory Einstein alluded to, was formulated a little after the Pauli principle.

E. U. Condon, J. E. Mack

Andreas Pichler, Sergio Bartalucci, M. Bazzi +28 more

The Pauli Exclusion Principle (PEP) was famously discovered in 1925 by the austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli. Since then, it underwent several experimental tests. Starting in 2006, the VIP (Violation of the Pauli Principle) experiment looked for 2p to 1s X-ray transitions in copper, where 2 electrons are present in the 1s state before the transition happens. These transitions violate the PEP, and the lack of detection of the corresponding X-ray photons lead to a preliminary upper limit for the violation of the PEP of 4.7 * 10^(-29). The follow-up experiment VIP 2 is currently in the testing phase and will be transported to its final destination, the underground laboratory of Gran Sasso in Italy, in autumn 2015. Several improvements compared to its predecessor like the use of new X-ray detectors and active shielding from background gives rise to a goal for the improvement of the upper limit of the probability for the violation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle of 2 orders of magnitude.