fermion

Definition

Any elementary or composite particle that has half-integer spin and thus obeys Fermi–Dirac statistics and the Pauli exclusion principle (equivalently, a particle for which the wavefunction of any system of identical such particles changes sign whenever two are swapped); a baryon, a lepton or a quark;

Etymology

From Fermi + -on. Named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi. Coined by English physicist Paul Dirac in 1945 in a lecture titled "Developments in Atomic Theory".

Example Sentences

• "The fermions treated by the Standard Model are the (composite) baryons and the (elementary) leptons and quarks."
• "According to the spin–statistics theorem, the wavefunction of a system of identical fermions (particles of half-integer spin) is antisymmetric under the operation of swapping any two particles."
• "A remarkable feature of lattice regularization is the appearance of several fermion species per fermion field in the lattice action."