Spin and Statistics

[boooeee]

I was reading through Volume 3 of Feynman's Lectures on Physics and he made the following remark on the correlation between a particle's spin and whether it is a boson or fermion:

Why is it that particles with half-integral spin are Fermi particles whose amplitudes add with the minus sign, whereas particles with integral spin are Bose particles whose amplitudes add with the positive sign? An explanation has been worked out by Pauli from complicated arguments of quantum field theory and relativity......It appears to be one of the few places in physics where there is a rule that can be stated very simply, but for which no one has found a simple and easy explanation

Which got me wondering, has anybody since then come up with a simpler explanation of this fact, or are you damned to learn quantum field theory if you truly want to understand it?

 

[Ziggurat]

Which got me wondering, has anybody since then come up with a simpler explanation of this fact, or are you damned to learn quantum field theory if you truly want to understand it?

Looking at a 1994 quantum mechanics textbook, it looks like that's still the case

 

[boooeee]

Re: Re: Spin and Statistics

Looking at a 1994 quantum mechanics textbook, it looks like that's still the case

My (slightly more recent) textbooks also are of no help.

I wonder if this means, as Feynman said, that we don't truly understand the connection, and that deeper understanding is yet to come. The whole "you have to be able to explain it to a barmaid" theory.