Spin - or, actually: Spin and Quantum Statistics

TL;DR

This paper reviews the discovery and mathematical description of electron spin, its role in quantum statistics, and implications for matter stability, including recent experimental and theoretical developments.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of the history, mathematical framework, and physical implications of electron spin and quantum statistics, highlighting recent advances and connections.

Findings

The electron's gyromagnetic factor g = 2 is crucial for matter stability analysis.

Radiative corrections refine the precision of g measurements.

The connection between spin, statistics, and braid statistics is elucidated.

Abstract

The history of the discovery of electron spin and the Pauli principle and the mathematics of spin and quantum statistics are reviewed. Pauli's theory of the spinning electron and some of its many applications in mathematics and physics are considered in more detail. The role of the fact that the tree-level gyromagnetic factor of the electron has the value g = 2 in an analysis of stability (and instability) of matter in arbitrary external magnetic fields is highlighted. Radiative corrections and precision measurements of g are reviewed. The general connection between spin and statistics, the CPT theorem and the theory of braid statistics are described.