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The conventional definition of the spin quantum number is s = n / 2 , where n can be any non-negative integer. Hence the allowed values of s are 0, 1 / 2 , 1, 3 / 2 , 2, etc. The value of s for an elementary particle depends only on the type of particle and cannot be altered in any known way (in contrast to the spin ...
A spinor visualized as a vector pointing along the Möbius band, exhibiting a sign inversion when the circle (the "physical system") is continuously rotated through a full turn of 360°. [a] In geometry and physics, spinors (pronounced "spinner" IPA / s p ɪ n ər /) are elements of a complex vector space that can be associated with Euclidean ...
Spin can be represented by a vector whose length is measured in units of the reduced Planck constant ħ (pronounced "h bar"). For quarks, a measurement of the spin vector component along any axis can only yield the values + ħ / 2 or − ħ / 2 ; for this reason quarks are classified as spin- 1 / 2 particles. [70]
Spin is the fundamental property that distinguishes the two types of elementary particles: fermions, with half-integer spins; and bosons, with integer spins. Photons, which are the quanta of light, have been long recognized as spin-1 gauge bosons. The polarization of the light is commonly accepted as its “intrinsic” spin degree of freedom ...
A spin model is a mathematical model used in physics primarily to explain magnetism. Spin models may either be classical or quantum mechanical in nature. Spin models have been studied in quantum field theory as examples of integrable models. Spin models are also used in quantum information theory and computability theory in theoretical computer ...
So a standard clock, with its spin vector defined by the rotation of its hands, has left-handed helicity if tossed with its face directed forwards. Mathematically, helicity is the sign of the projection of the spin vector onto the momentum vector: "left" is negative, "right" is positive.
In atomic physics, spin–orbit coupling, also known as spin-pairing, describes a weak magnetic interaction, or coupling, of the particle spin and the orbital motion of this particle, e.g. the electron spin and its motion around an atomic nucleus. One of its effects is to separate the energy of internal states of the atom, e.g. spin-aligned and ...
Given a unit vector in 3 dimensions, for example (a, b, c), one takes a dot product with the Pauli spin matrices to obtain a spin matrix for spin in the direction of the unit vector. The eigenvectors of that spin matrix are the spinors for spin-1/2 oriented in the direction given by the vector. Example: u = (0.8, -0.6, 0) is a unit vector ...