Permutation symmetry in spinor quantum gases: selection rules, conservation laws, and correlations

Abstract

Many-body systems of identical arbitrary-spin particles, with separable spin and spatial degrees of freedom, are considered. Their eigenstates can be classified by Young diagrams, corresponding to non-trivial permutation symmetries (beyond the conventional paradigm of symmetric--antisymmetric states). The present work obtains (a) selection rules for additional non-separable (dependent on spins and coordinates) $k$-body interactions: the Young diagrams, associated with the initial and the final states of a transition, can differ by relocation of no more than $k$ boxes between their rows; and (b) correlation rules: eigenstate-averaged local correlations of $k$ particles vanish if $k$ exceeds the number of columns (for bosons) or rows (for fermions) in the associated Young diagram. It also elucidates the physical meaning of the quantities conserved due to permutation symmetry --- in 1929, Dirac identified those with characters of the symmetric group --- relating them to experimentally observable correlations of several particles. The results provide a way to control the formation of entangled states belonging to multidimensional non-Abelian representations of the symmetric group. These states can find applications in quantum computation and metrology.

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