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Spin

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Compendium of Quantum Physics

According to quantum mechanics, spin—the intrinsic angular momentum of an electron, nucleus, or elementary particle at rest—is a decidedly nonclassical concept. The ► spin statistics theorem of ► quantum statistics distinguishes bosons and fermions obeying ► Bose-Einstein statistics or ► Fermi-Dirac statistics, respectively, depending on whether the particle's spin is an even or odd multiple of h/2, with h = h/2τ (h being ► Planck's constant). The convoluted history of the concept of spin nevertheless reaches back into the final ► crisis period of the old ► quantum theory, linked to the semi-classical ► atomic model by Niels Bohr (1885–1962), Arnold Sommerfeld (1868–1951) and their collaborators (the ► Sommerfeld school).

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Hentschel, K. (2009). Spin. In: Greenberger, D., Hentschel, K., Weinert, F. (eds) Compendium of Quantum Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70626-7_204

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70626-7_204

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