# Tag Info

18

Helium nuclei behave like bosons only in phenomena where their integrity is preserved and they can be assumed as point-like particles. When you compress them a lot this is not the case any more. Single protons and neutrons will start to interact with each other and they are fermions. You have no chance to condensate them in a black hole, indeed what you get ...

9

That's an interesting question, even though it might be biased by the definition of forces, and on what particles they apply. For instance, if you want to describe the force that exists between photon (even though direct photon-photon scattering has not been observed yet), it is mainly due to electron loops, so in that case the `force' is fermionic. On a ...

8

The simplest Feynman diagram for an interaction between two particles looks like a letter "H". The cross-bar is a force-carrier being exchanged. At each vertex, you have a particle either emitting or absorbing a force-carrier. If the force-carrier has a half-integer spin, then you can't emit or absorb it without violating conservation of angular momentum. ...

8

OK, here you go: No. Consider the one-particle sector, with states $|n\rangle$ having occupation number $n$. Wlog we can suppose that the states are normalized. Then $$a|n\rangle =\sqrt{n}|n−1\rangle,$$ so $$\|a|n\rangle\| = \sqrt n.$$ This means that $a$ is not bounded. The same goes for $a^\dagger$.

8

Great question that exposes some really confusing terminology. This is a rather long answer, and the punchline is basically in the second-to-last paragraph, but I think (hope) it's worthwhile to read the whole answer because I tried to give a somewhat systematic description of fermionic states using a specific, simple example along the way. Firstly, let's ...

7

If it is a planetary size mass, then thermal pressure from the kinetic energy of the atoms would prevent collapse. For larger masses, helium fusion would create radiation pressure to stop the collapse. Also, helium plasma would contain free electrons which would cause electron degenarcy pressure. Red giants of less than 2 solar masses initially have ...

6

The "spin" tells us how the wavefunction changes when we rotate space (or spacetime). Just because I double all charges by convention, the behaviour of the wavefunction will not be any different. What will happen is that the "doubling" or charges will lead to the "halving" of your definition of angles such that the physical results (which depends on angle ...

6

There simply doesn't exist any container with $\mu\gt \epsilon_0$; that's what the quoted sentence says. What you could try is to try to increase the chemical potential. But the Bose-Einstein distribution says $$\langle n_i\rangle \sim\frac{g_i}{e^{(\epsilon_i-\mu)/kT}-1}$$ and if you chose values $\mu\gt \epsilon_i$, then the exponent in the denominator ...

6

I think what you are talking about is the stimulated emission of radiation. This is part of the process that occurs in a LASER and in fact, gave the LASER it's name - Light Amplification through the Simulated Emission of Radiation. When an atom is in an excited state it can spontaneously decay to a lower energy state with the emission of a photon of a ...

6

Unlike photons, gluons carry the "charge" of the strong force (confusingly, it's called "color"). This means that, unlike photons, gluons interact with each other. The effect is that, rather than spreading out in all directions (as photons do), gluons tend to stick together and form strings. For example, two quarks (which have color) are not connected by ...

5

Our current best experimentally verified theory, quantum field theory, isn't based on matter being particles or waves - all matter consists of excitations in quantum fields. The interactions of the quantum fields may appear particle like or wave like, so the wave-particle duality is a duality in the way the fields interact not a duality in the matter itself. ...

5

If by unification, one means that the bosons' and fermions' properties are linked to each other by a principle, the answer according to everything we know is Yes because the only principle able to link properties is a symmetry and a symmetry mapping bosons to fermions and vice versa is clearly a Grassmann-odd generator which has to carry a half-integral spin ...

5

I think the answer is it depends on distance (relative to the size of your system). Another well known example of a boson which is comprised of fermionic components is the helium-4 atom, which has integer spin (both the nucleus and the neutral atom itself). Fermionic or bosonic behavior of a composite particle (or system) is only seen at large (compared ...

4

It can. This is exactly what happens when Helium-3 becomes superfluid. It's also what happens in superconductivity, which you mention in your question, when electrons combine into Cooper pairs. Well, it's not exactly what you ask since neither liquid Helium-3 nor electrons are a gas. It's very unlikely a gas of fermions could pair up to form a gas of bosons ...

4

A composite particle consisting of an even (odd) number of fermions behaves like a boson (fermion). Swapping $\require{mhchem}\ce{^3He}$ atoms involves swapping an odd number of fermions (3 nucleons and 2 electrons): an odd number of sign changes of the wave function corresponds to no sign change or bosonic symmetry. Swapping $\ce{^4He}$ atoms involves ...

4

The definition of the partition function is $$Z = \sum_\mathbf{q} e^{-\beta E_\Sigma(\mathbf{q})} \qquad (1)$$ where $\mathbf{q}$ is the set of quantum numbers describing the microscopical state of the system, $E_\Sigma(\mathbf{q})$ is the energy of the system when it is in that microscopical state, $\beta = 1/(k_B T)$ In your case $\mathbf{q}$ is the ...

3

In contrast with the previous incorrect answers that I hadn't noticed, there isn't any ambiguity or confusion about the Bose-Einstein or Fermi-Dirac statistics for composite systems such as atoms. A particle – elementary or composite particles – that contains an even number of elementary (or other) fermions is a boson; if it contains an odd number, it is a ...

3

I) OP is asking for the composition formula for so-called single mode squeezing operators, see eq. (8) below. We will not here prove the composition formula (8), but only give partial hints and references. The key is to realize that one can identify $$\tag{1} \sigma_{+}~:=~\frac{1}{2} a^{\dagger}a^{\dagger}, \qquad \sigma_{-}~:=~\frac{1}{2} aa, ... 3 Consider the homogeneous ideal Bose gas, where we have:$$ \langle N\rangle = \sum_{\vec{k}}\frac{1}{\exp{\beta(\epsilon_{\vec{k}}-\mu)-1}}. $$The notation \langle N_{\vec{k}}\rangle means the average number of particles in state |\vec{k}\rangle, which obviously has to be larger or equal to zero. In the case that \vec{k} = 0 we must have$$ ...

3

Thats the whole point of dividing the world of particles in bosons and fermions. Because of the fact that they are indistinguishable we could switch two particles and we would NEVER know. So we could switch two particles, let's define the permutation operator $\hat{P}$ that has this effect. Upon applying this operator to a wavefunction that contains two ...

3

As you already wrote, the $(3/2)\partial^2 c$ term is needed for the current to be a one-form i.e. $(1,0)$ tensor field; see also page 131 of Polchinski's String Theory, volume 1. This means that if you compute the OPE $$T(z) j^{BRST}(0)\sim \dots,$$ you want to get $$\dots \sim \frac{1}{z^2} j^{BRST}(0)+\frac{1}{z}\partial j^{BRST}(0),$$ see e.g. ...

3

Comments to the question (v3): In contrast to QED with fermionic matter, in QED with bosonic matter, the full Noether current ${\cal J}^{\mu}$ (for global gauge transformations) tends to depend explicitly on the gauge potential $A^{\mu}$, see e.g. Refs. 1-2 and this Phys.SE post. The reason for this difference is because the QED Lagrangian for fermionic ...

3

The chemical potential can be thought of as how accepting the system is of new particles -- how much work you have to do to stick a new particle in the system. Since you can stick as many bosons in a given state as you want, the system is always accepting of new particles. At worst, you have to do zero work to add a boson (corresponding to $\mu=0$), and ...

2

It is simply the fact that if the $g$ is large, $$g \cos(\hat{\phi}) \to g(1- \frac{1}{2}\hat{\phi}^2 +\dots)$$ the ground state will be trapped in one of the vacuum sectors, at the minimum of the potential energy. (Please check S Coleman's book $\it{Aspects\; of\; symmetry}$ or his Phys Rev D paper on quantum sine-Gordon eq. It may offer differ views than ...

2

A vector in a (polynimial) $gl(3)$ representation is highest weight if it is annihilated by the raising root operators $a_jk = b_j^{\dagger}b_k$, $k>j$. In our case, the relevant operators are $a_{12}$, $a_{23}$, and $a_{13}$. We do not need to check the third case, because $a_{13} = [ a_{12}, a_{23}]$ is given by the commutator of the two other ...

2

It does not mediate flavor changing because the couplings in the gauge basis are of the form $c_L Z_\mu \bar{\psi}^i_L \gamma^\mu \psi^i_L$ and $c_R Z_\mu \bar{\psi}^i_R \gamma^\mu \psi^i_R$ with $i$ flavor index and $c_{L,R}$ flavor independent by gauge invariance (that is, $c_L$ and $c_R$ are proportional to the identity in flavor space). In this basis ...

2

"Multiplying the wavefunctions" is a pretty nebulous term. Let's work with some definite vocabulary here, shall we? $(1)$ The states of one QM particle are elements of some Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$. If we care only about position on a line as completely defining the state (which we can for a scalar boson), i.e. demand that the space be spanned by the ...

2

The idea is actually simple. However, most book usually use sloppy terms, or they have not give explicit discussion on this issue, so it usually confused students. The correct phrase should be: Individual fermion in a system cannot have the same single particle wavefunction It is clear that the whole system itself always described by a total ...

2

Did you here that in the context of lasers or BEC? Photons are bosonic particles, this is generally what people refer to when they say 'they want to be together'.

2

Some remarks about both statements: "You need stringent experimental condition to observe the particle behaviour of photons for instance." I feel that you don't need to look very far. Counting photons is quite common in experimental physics. And you likely know about the double slit experiment, where you get those interference patterns - when the ...

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