Fermi-Dirac Statistics

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Fermi-Dirac statistics (F-D statistics) is a part of the science of physics that describes the energies of single particles in a system comprising many identical particles that obey the Pauli Exclusion Principle. It is named after Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac, who each discovered it independently. F-D statistics applies to identical particles with half-integer spin in a system in thermal equilibrium. Additionally, the particles in this system are assumed to have negligible mutual interaction. This allows the many-particle system to be described in terms of single-particle energy states. The result is the Fermi-Dirac distribution of particles over these states and includes the condition that no two particles can occupy the same state, which has a considerable effect on the properties of the system. Since Fermi-Dirac statistics applies to particles with half-integer spin, they have come to be called fermions. It is most commonly applied to electrons, which are fermions with spin 1/2. Fermi-Dirac statistics is a part of the more general field of statistical mechanics and uses the principles of quantum mechanics.