Talk:Fermion
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bose einstein condensate
[edit]So a grain of sand prevents another grain of sand from occupying the same location.
Unless it's cold enough to form a bose einstein condensate!
BECs are formed out of bosons! Hence "bose." However, fermions can form condensates -- but they are condensates in momentum space only, not physical space. (i.e., the condensate has lots of fermions with the same momentum, but they are not all in the same place), so the Pauli ex. principle is not violated.
- Can you explain this or point to a reference? As far as I'm aware, there's no difference in this respect between position space and momentum space -- antisymmetry in both cases requires the wavefunction to vanish at equal position/equal momentum. Fpahl 06:15, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC)
Please Explain
[edit]The paragraph begining "Of course..." is not helpfull to the uninitiated (I speak as someone visiting the page without a prior background in the subject matter). If there is a more appropriate topic on why "determining the fermionic or bosonic behavior of a composite particle (or system) is only seen at large (compared to size of the system) distance", perhaps there should be a link to it.
Is the first sentence contradictory with the spin-1/2 article?
[edit]The first sentence "In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics and generally has half odd integer spin: spin 1/2, spin 3/2, etc" bears a warning that reads "contradicts material at the article 'Spin-1/2'." I personally don't see where the contradiction is. It if refers to the fact than the Spin-1/2 article reads "All known fermions, (…) have a spin of ½," there is actually no contradiction.
This is not specific to "particle physics"
[edit]"Fermion" is not specifically about particle physics as the lead currently claims. Mains Olsen (talk) 23:32, 30 October 2026 (UTC)
- The lead is supposed to to summarise the body of the article, which currently says almost nothing about non-particle physics aspects, and in any event doesn't cite sources. The article could be considerably improved with material on such things as the electronic properties of materials, superconductivity, magnetism, Fermi liquids, quantum phase transitions, and topological matter. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:52, 31 October 2026 (UTC)
Reference for Dirac
[edit]The reference after the claim that Dirac was responsible for choosing the name is difficult to check. Mains Olsen (talk) 10:28, 31 October 2026 (UTC)