ABSTRACT
Synopsis: ƒe connection between a particle’s spin and the statistics it obeys is given. Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac statistics are explained and illustrated with products of wave functions. A new type of particle basis state is described and two possibilities for the commutation properties of the associated raising (“creation”) and lowering (“annihilation”) ladder operators are examined, giving rise to the Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac cases. ƒe relation between particle occupation number and energy is inferred from detailed balance, and cubical enclosures of particles are studied. Two physics mysteries encountered in the earlier chapters (“zweideutigkeit” and the vanishing electronic component of specific heat) are explained. ƒe Hartree-Fock theoretical framework for the approximate treatment of many-particle atomic systems is constructed.
