Encyclopedia > Fermion

  Article Content

Fermion

All elementary particles are either fermions or bosons.

Fermions, named after Enrico Fermi, are particles which form totally-antisymmetric composite quantum states. As a result, they are subject to the Pauli exclusion principle and obey Fermi-Dirac statistics. The spin-statistics theorem[?] states that fermions have half-integer spin.

The elementary particles which make up matter are fermions, predominantly quarks (which form protons and neutrons) and electrons. These elementary fermions are classified into two groups: leptons and quarks.

Examples of fermions:

See also: Identical particles



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Grateful Dead

... "Dark Star" -- but lacked the energy of the shows and did not sell terribly well. The 1970s live album Live Dead did capture more of their essence, but commercial success ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 35.6 ms