I've read that the Jordan-Wigner transformation changes qubits into spinless fermions. What, exactly, are spinless fermions? I'm guessing it doesn't mean spin zero which would be a boson, so what does it mean?
1 Answer
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It is only in relativistic quantum field theory that spin and statistics are connected; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin-statistics_theorem
In non-relativistic QFT the two are completely distinct. Spin manifests as local degrees of freedom, and statistics is encoded in the (anti-)commutation relations at equal times.
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2$\begingroup$ Plea for help: does anyone have a self-contained (online) reference to CCR and CAR? The Wikipedia page on this is needlessly pedantic for a beginner (i.e. considering the exponentiated forms to make them compact --- I doubt the OP much cares for compactness). $\endgroup$– gennethOct 11, 2011 at 13:18
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$\begingroup$ Thanks @genneth, so does that mean spinless does mean spin zero? $\endgroup$– CalvinOct 11, 2011 at 15:58
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3$\begingroup$ You can treat it as spin zero, but only if you don't take that to mean anything more than just a lack of local degrees if freedom. For instance, it says nothing about angular momentum. $\endgroup$– gennethOct 11, 2011 at 18:02