Examples of fermion in the following topics:
-
- The Pauli exclusion principle states that no two fermions can have identical wavefunctions.
- More technically, it states that the total wave function for two identical fermions is antisymmetric with respect to exchange of the particles.
- Fermions include elementary particles such as quarks (the constituent particles of protons and neutrons), electrons and neutrinos.
- Atoms can have different overall spin, which determines whether they are fermions or bosons—for example, helium-3 has spin 1/2 and is therefore a fermion, in contrast to helium-4 which has spin 0, making it a boson.
- In the theory of quantum mechanics, fermions are described by antisymmetric states.