The Pauli Exclusion Principle is a basic principle of Quantum Mechanics, and its validity has never been seriously challenged. However, given its fundamental standing, it is very important to check it as thoroughly as possible. Here we describe the VIP (VIolation of the Pauli exclusion principle) experiment, an improved version of the Ramberg and Snow experiment (E. Ramberg and G. Snow, {\it Phys. Lett. B} {\bf 238}, 438 (1990)); VIP has just completed the installation at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory, and aims to test the Pauli Exclusion Principle for electrons with unprecedented accuracy, down to β2/2≈10−30−10−31. We report preliminary experimental results and briefly discuss some of the implications of a possible violation.
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0608088,
title = {VIP: An Experiment to Search for a Violation of the Pauli Exclusion Principle},
author = {S. Bartalucci and S. Bertolucci and M. Bragadireanu and M. Cargnelli and M. Catitti and C. Curceanu and S. Di Matteo and J. -P. Egger and C. Guaraldo and M. Iliescu and T. Ishiwatari and M. Laubenstein and J. Marton and E. Milotti and D. Pietreanu and T. Ponta and D. L. Sirghi and F. Sirghi and L. Sperandio and E. Widmann and J. Zmeskal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0608088},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
Plenary talk presented by E. Milotti at Meson 2006, Cracow, 9-13 June 2006