Chapter 34. Identical Particles

Giancarlo Ghirardi

K. Heyde, John L. Wood

Jonathan Allday, Simon Hands

In quantum theory, and especially quantum field theory, the nature of quantum states is transformed if the particles are identical. In fact, the impact of particles (or better quanta) being identical is more profound in quantum theory than in classical mechanics. Their identity has direct experimental consequences over and above those related to the occupation of states. Over the next couple of chapters, we will explore the quantum theory of identical particles to draw out the impact on the entropy of a collection of such particles .

Efstratios Manousakis

Abstract This chapter discusses the case of a many-body system of identical particles. It considers the consequencies of the symmetry of the Hamiltonian under particle permutations in this case. It discusses how to build many-body Boson and Fermion states. It then introduces the formalism of so-called second quantization, which is usefu, in the case of identical particles. It also expresses the many-body Hamiltonian in terms of creation and annihilation operators.

Luis Grave de Peralta, Maricela Fernández Lozada, Hira Farooq +3 more