Spin and Statistics from S² Topology: A Discrete-Geometric Derivation of Half-Integer Spin and the Spin–Statistics Theorem from the Three Great Circles of S²
C. R. (René) de Haan
The rotation of a spin-½ fermion by 2π produces a phase factor of −1, not +1. This fact, confirmed by neutron interferometry (Werner et al. 1975; Rauch et al. 1975) and routinely exploited in quantum information, precision metrology, and the chemistry of atoms, has no classical analogue. In the Standard Model it is accommodated by postulating that fermions transform under the SU(2) representations with half-integer label j, and the spin–statistics theorem — that integer-spin particles obey Bose–Einstein statistics and half-integer-spin particles Fermi–Dirac — is established by Pauli’s 1940 proof using Lorentz invariance, microcausality, and energy-positivity. The spin label, the −1 phase, and the statistics theorem arrive in the conventional picture from three separate arguments, each importing assumptions from a different layer of theory. We show that in the (3+3) spacetime framework (de Haan 2026, book manuscript), in which the third time dimension t₃ is compactified as a discrete two-sphere S² with 2^152 Planck-area cells and three mutually orthogonal great circles, all three results follow from the discrete geometry itself — specifically from the Berry phase of orbits on the three great circles (computed from their solid angles) and the quaternionic i^k phase that the yz circle carries as a Hopf fibre. The electron is the spin-½ mode on the yz circle; the −1 phase on 2π rotation is i^2 accumulated over the two equatorial crossings of one yz orbit; the spin–statistics connection reads off directly from the Berry-phase sign; Pauli exclusion follows from the forced antisymmetry. The derivation uses only the discrete cell structure, the three great circles, the solid angles they subtend, and the quaternionic phase from the Hopf fibration S³ → S². It does not invoke SU(2) representation theory, the Dirac equation, Lorentz invariance, microcausality, or energy-positivity — each of these is itself derived elsewhere in the framework and using them as inputs would import derived concepts into a derivation that should be upstream of them. The paper’s contribution is the explicit statement that three previously-independent features of quantum mechanics — the half-integer spin label, the −1 phase on 2π, and the spin–statistics theorem — reduce to consequences of a single geometric statement: the electron lives on the yz great circle of the discrete S² and carries the Hopf-fibre i^k quaternionic phase. The textbook SU(2)/SO(3) account of spin is recovered as a representation-theoretic label for what the geometry has already produced, not as an axiomatic input.
•Apr 22, 2026•0 citations