Identical Particles and Second Quantization

In quantum mechanics, identical particles – multiple particles with identical properties (mass, spin, charges) behave very differently from classical particles. This underlies a lot of important properties of quantum matter.

Ideally we would spend a fair amount of time on this, and study the impact of the quantum mechanics of identical particles on multielectron atoms, degenerate quantum gases, and so on. Instead I am going to briefly introduce the basics of identical fermions and bosons. Then I will launch into the quantization of the electromagnetic field, in which photons as bosonic particles will emerge naturally.