2012/04/25 by Malte C. Tichy, Malte C Tichy, Markus Tiersch +2 · 81 citations
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Boson #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Fermion #Identical particles #Interference (communication) #Pauli exclusion principle #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Simple (philosophy) #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1367-2630/14/9/093015
published in New Journal of Physics 14(9), 093015 (IOP Publishing) · 12 pages, 5 figures
arxiv created 2012/04/25 · openalex publication_date 2012/09/11 · arxiv updated 2012/09/13 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Identical particles exhibit correlations even in the absence of inter-particle interaction, due to the exchange (anti)symmetry of the many-particle wavefunction. Two fermions obey the Pauli principle and anti-bunch, whereas two bosons favor bunched, doubly occupied states. Here, we show that the collective interference of three or more particles leads to much more diverse behavior than expected from the boson–fermion dichotomy known from quantum statistical mechanics. The emerging complexity of many-particle interference is tamed by a simple law for the strict suppression of events in the Bell multiport beam splitter. The law shows that counting events are governed by widely species-independent interference, such that bosons and fermions can even exhibit identical interference signatures, while their statistical character remains subordinate. Recent progress in the preparation of tailored many-particle states of bosonic and fermionic atoms promises experimental verification and applications in novel many-particle interferometers.