The Pauli principle revisited

Abstract

By the Pauli exclusion principle, no quantum state can be occupied by more than one electron. One can state this as a constraint on the one electron density matrix that bounds its eigenvalues by 1. Shortly after its discovery, the Pauli principle was replaced by anti-symmetry of the multi-electron wave function. In this paper we solve a longstanding problem about the impact of this replacement on the one electron density matrix, that goes far beyond the original Pauli principle. Our approach uses Berenstein and Sjamaar's theorem on the restriction of an adjoint orbit onto a subgroup, and allows us to treat any type of permutational symmetry. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.