APS » PROLA » Phys. Rev. A » Volume 59 » Issue 2

Phys. Rev. A 59, 1538 - 1555 (1999)

Density operators for fermions
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Kevin E. Cahill *
New Mexico Center for Particle Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131-1156

Roy J. Glauber †
Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Received 21 August 1998

The mathematical methods that have been used to analyze the statistical properties of boson fields, and in particular the coherence of photons in quantum optics, have their counterparts for Fermi fields. The coherent states, the displacement operators, the P representation, and the other operator expansions all possess surprisingly close fermionic analogues. These methods for describing the statistical properties of fermions are based upon a practical calculus of anticommuting variables. They are used to calculate correlation functions and counting distributions for general systems of fermions.


©1999 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRA/v59/p1538
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.59.1538
PACS: 03.75.-b, 42.50.Dv, 42.50.Lc

* URL: http://kevin.phys.unm.edu/∼kevin/. Electronic address: kevin@kevin.phys.unm.edu
† Electronic address: glauber@physics.harvard.edu

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