Fundamental characteristic property of particles which together with orbital angular momentum acts as the generator of rotations and which doesn't have a classical equivalent but is sometimes compared to and contrasted with classical intrinsic angular momentum.

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Huge confusion with Fermions and Bosons and how they relate to total spin of atom

I am supremely confused when something has spin or when it does not. For example, atomic Hydrogen has 4 fermions, three quarks to make a proton, and 1 electron. There is an even number of fermions, ...
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62 views

For mesons, or baryons, do sea quarks contribute to the angular momentum of the bound state?

The total angular momentum of a bound state of quarks, such as a meson say, can be done by studying the spin and orbital angular momentum of the 2 valence quarks. What about the sea quarks why they ...
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56 views

Is conservation of statistics logically independent of spin?

If the number of fermions is $n$, we expect the quantity $(-1)^n$ to be conserved, i.e., $n$ never changes between even and odd. This is known as conservation of statistics. In the normal context of ...
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Baryon wave function symmetry

If a baryon wavefunction is $\Psi = \psi_{spatial} \psi_{colour} \psi_{flavour} \psi_{spin}$, and we consider the ground state (L=0) only. We know that the whole thing has to be antisymmetric under ...
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104 views

Do all black holes spin in the same direction?

My question is as stated above, do all black holes spin the same direction? To my knowledge, the spin in the direction of the spin of the matter that created them. Another similar question was asked ...
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Why do we identify symmetric 2nd rank tensors with spin-2 particles in string theory?

I am going through Tong's lecture notes on String Theory and came across the following irrep decomposition (Chap 2, p.43) of the bosonic string first excited states: $$\text{traceless symmetric} ...
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154 views

What is the difference between the properties of Electron spin and Photon polarization/helicity?

What is the difference between a photon's polarization/helicity and an electrons spin half? I know that the photon is spin 1 but isn't its polarization analogous to spin half? This question stems ...
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234 views

Do EM waves transmit spin polarization?

Suppose you have a normal dipole antennae (transmitter and receiver) . Spin polarized current (as opposed to normal current) is sent into the transmitter, it emits an EM wave and the Receiver receives ...
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What's the difference between exchange spin wave and magnetostatic spin wave?

So far I've heard of three kinds of spin waves Magnetostatic spin waves (MSW) Dipole-exchange spin waves (DESW) Exchange spin waves (ESW) What's the difference?
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Parity and Helicity of the Higgs Boson

I have been studying how the spin and parity of the new boson discovered at the LHC will be studied and have run into some confusion. The Standard Model Higgs is expected to be a scalar (i.e. have ...
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102 views

Meaning of spin

I'm pretty astounded that I did not hear about this sooner, but in my course on QFT our professor told us that the concept of spin can be used to mean three things: Mechanical spin (apparently a ...
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Why does scattering depend on spin?

I'm reading about giant magnetoresistance (GMR), and the most important feature of this phenomenon is the spin dependance of the electron scattering inside a magnetised lattice. However, I don't quite ...
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Spin polarization of decay products

A relativistic moving particle, e.g. muon $\mu^+$, described by its four-momentum vector $p_\mu$, charge $e$ and with a given spin polarization, ${\bf S}=(S_x,S_y,S_z)$, decays into three particles, ...
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Electron Spin Resonance and Free electrons

When performing an experiment to observe electron spin resonance, we use DPPH molecules as they contain an unpaired electron on one of the N atoms. My question is, why cant free electrons be used in ...
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141 views

How is parity relevant to determining angular momentum?

Question: Particle A, whose spin $\mathbf{J}$ is less than 2, decays into two identical spin-1/2 particles of type B. What are the allowed values of the orbital angular momentum $\mathbf{L}$, ...
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123 views

Angular momentum confusion

Could somebody please explain what is going on here? We have a system of two indistinguishable spin-1 bosons. We shall adopt the center of mass frame. Let $S$ = total spin $L$ = relative orbital ...
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51 views

Helicity operator in Non relativistic limit

Helicity operator in Dirac equation is given by $$H=\frac{\vec{S}\times \vec{P}}{P^{2}}$$ This operator commutes with dirac hamiltonian.We can also define a helicity(with same form) operator in case ...
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91 views

In what direction does a frustrated magnetic moment get aligned?

Consider 3 layers of Ferromagnetic materials stacked on top of each other with appropriate spacer layers in between. Let the top and bottom layers be pinned to layers of Anti Ferromagnets adjacent to ...
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How is multiplicity given by 2S+1?

Suppose there are two electrons in an atom with $s_1 = \frac{1}{2}, l_1 = 1$ and $s2 = \frac{1}{2}, l_2 = 1$. Hence the total $S$ (of the atom) may be +1 or 0. And total $L$ is either +2,+1 or 0. Now ...
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Does the electron have spin in it's own reference frame?

In our atomic physics class, we saw that the spin-orbit coupling term arises from the scalar product of the magnetic moment of the electron (proportional to its spin), and the magnetic field created ...
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105 views

Does String Theory explain spin?

The state of a particle will generally change if you rotate it. The details of how the state changes under an infinitesimal rotation are contained in the angular momentum operator J. This operator can ...
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93 views

Ground and first excited state of non interacting spin system Hamiltonian

For a non interacting spin system containing two $\frac{1}{2}$ spin particles I am trying to determine its Hamiltonian. If the energy of a up spin is $+\mu {\bf B}$ and a down spin is $-\mu {\bf B}$, ...
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Experimental realization of Quantum Teleportation of Spin, not polarization, not ions or atoms

I've looked everywhere in databases my school provides, to google searches, to the questions asked in physics forums, and here. As I understand, the original QT (quantum teleportation) protocol ...
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Can experiment distinguish the basis in which a singlet state is represented?

Let $\left(|\uparrow\rangle,|\downarrow\rangle\right)$ and $\left(|\nearrow\rangle,|\swarrow\rangle\right)$ be two bases of the $2$-dimensional Hilbert space $H$. Can an experiment distinguish ...