Electromagnetism, Spin, and Statistics

Abstract

Delicacies in quantum physics for magnetic sources carrying electric charge, recently exposed by Wilczek, are studied further, with emphasis on the meaning of angular momentum for these systems, and the nature of phases which affect the statistics of indistinguishable objects. Wilczek has uncovered a remarkable two-body interaction which leads to a many-body system in two dimensions changing from Bose gas to Fermi gas as the interaction parameter is varied. A nontrivial realization of these notions might occur in a thin sheet of superconductor with many magnetic vortices.