An international team led by Princeton University scientists has discovered Weyl fermions, an elusive massless particle theorized 85 years ago. The particle could give rise to faster and more efficient electronics because ...
General Physics
Jul 16, 2015
21
7936
An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of a new type of particle called the type-II Weyl fermion in metallic materials. When subjected to a magnetic field, the materials containing the particle act ...
General Physics
Nov 25, 2015
6
4524
An international team of researchers have found evidence of a mysterious new state of matter, first predicted 40 years ago, in a real material. This state, known as a quantum spin liquid, causes electrons - thought to be ...
Quantum Physics
Apr 4, 2016
23
8269
Physicists at MIT and elsewhere have observed evidence of Majorana fermions—particles that are theorized to also be their own antiparticle—on the surface of a common metal: gold. This is the first sighting of Majorana ...
Quantum Physics
Apr 10, 2020
3
4845
Princeton University scientists have observed an exotic particle that behaves simultaneously like matter and antimatter, a feat of math and engineering that could yield powerful computers based on quantum mechanics.
General Physics
Oct 2, 2014
22
2
In 1928, physicist Paul Dirac made the stunning prediction that every fundamental particle in the universe has an antiparticle – its identical twin but with opposite charge. When particle and antiparticle met they would ...
General Physics
Jul 20, 2017
3
3293
Bosons and fermions, the two classes into which all particles—from the sub-atomic to atoms themselves—can be sorted, behave very differently under most circumstances. While identical bosons like to congregate, identical ...
Quantum Physics
Mar 27, 2020
0
1821
A joint team of scientists at the University of California, Riverside, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is getting closer to confirming the existence of an exotic quantum particle called Majorana fermion, crucial ...
Condensed Matter
Jun 28, 2019
0
5
Physicists at the University of California, Irvine and elsewhere have fabricated new two-dimensional quantum materials with breakthrough electrical and magnetic attributes that could make them building blocks of future quantum ...
General Physics
Apr 26, 2017
11
4460
Quantum computers with the ability to perform complex calculations, encrypt data more securely and more quickly predict the spread of viruses, may be within closer reach thanks to a new discovery by Johns Hopkins researchers.
Quantum Physics
Oct 10, 2019
3
3482
In particle physics, a fermion (named after Enrico Fermi) is any particle which obeys the Fermi–Dirac statistics (and follows the Pauli exclusion principle). Fermions contrast with bosons which obey Bose–Einstein statistics.
A fermion can be an elementary particle, such as the electron; or it can be a composite particle, such as the proton. The spin-statistics theorem holds that, in any reasonable relativistic quantum field theory, particles with integer spin are bosons, while particles with half-integer spin are fermions.
In contrast to bosons, only one fermion can occupy a particular quantum state at any given time. If more than one fermion occupies the same physical space, at least one property of each fermion, such as its spin, must be different. Fermions are usually associated with matter, whereas bosons are generally force carrier particles; although in the current state of quantum physics the distinction between the two concepts is unclear.
The Standard Model recognizes two types of elementary fermions: quarks and leptons. In all, the model distinguishes 24 different fermions: 6 quarks and 6 leptons, each with a corresponding anti-particle.
Composite fermions, such as protons and neutrons, are key building blocks of matter. Weakly interacting fermions can also display bosonic behavior under extreme conditions, such as in superconductivity.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
