1

As well known, spin could not be thought of as a rotational motion in classical mechanics, i.e. it's an intrinsic property.

But how to prove it? i.e. how to mathematically/experimentally show that the statement, spin could not have any classical (rotational) correspondence, was true?

Edit: "It" here meant:

  1. Is necessarily for spin to be some intrinsic quantity? or rather could be explained, even if it's non classical like Andrei has mentioned.

  2. In experimental setup, could we do a experiment and then claim that it's true for all spin? Because, as Cinaed Simson has mentioned, Stern Gerlach experiment was one experiment to prove this for single electron, i.e. a particular spin $1/2$ system. However, it did not experimentally exclude other spin system jut by itself.

  3. Also, just because the system collapse(in Stern Gerlach), doesn't mean there could not be a orbital motion, right? Quote: Ben Crowell:"...even-even nuclei usually have a first excited state that is spin 2, and this spin is explained correctly in most cases (for open-shell nuclei) as arising completely from the orbital motion of the nucleons (not their spin-1/2's)..." But I didn't quite understand what he meant by even(boson) and odd(fermion). What does even/odd has to do with orbital motion?

ShoutOutAndCalculate
  • 3,535

1 Answers1

1

ShoutOutAndCalculate,

Please take a look on this paper:

Proposed physical explanation for the electron spin and related antisymmetry

Cetto, A.M., de la Peña, L. & Valdés-Hernández, A. Quantum Stud.: Math. Found. (2019) 6: 45. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40509-017-0152-8

You can read it free here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1707.08674

The paper presents a counterexample to the claim that spin cannot be originating in a classical context:

"The calculations presented here confirm the physical picture of the spin of the electron as a helicoidal motion (a zitterbewegung) around the local mean trajectory, adding an effective structure to the originally pointlike particle."

The theory that allowed these calculations is called "Stochastic Electrodynamics". It is in fact classical electromagnetism with a certain assumption regarding the initial state.

Urb
  • 2,724
Andrei
  • 839