L23.4 Symmetric and Antisymmetric states of N particles

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MIT 8.06 Quantum Physics III, Spring 2018
Instructor: Barton Zwiebach

L23.4 Symmetric and Antisymmetric states of N particles

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Why does Prof Zwiebach *postulate* that identical particles have totally symmetric or anti-symmetric wave functions? In other courses, including the one by Allan Adams, that fact is "derived" from the idea that there is no experiment you can do to distinguish the particles. Not being able to distinguish by means of any experiment is taken to mean |psi(a, b)| = |psi(b, a)|, ie the probabilities are equal.

TBH, the motivation for this probability argument (the one from Allan Adams) always bothered me. The motivation I'm assuming is that if P(a, b) != P(b, a), then certain orderings of measurements would be less probable than others, so (7 meters, 8 meters) not as likely as the reverse. But I thought that when I make a measurement of identical particles, I get an *unordered* list of numbers, because I can't tell which particle now has each value. They're identical .

Any help would be appreciated, and I'm sorry if what I'm asking isn't clear.

physicsguy
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1:36 "The majority are -a- unitary."
5:41 "You cannot expect -the- *a* basis."

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