Test of the Pauli Exclusion Principle in the VIP-2 Underground Experiment

Catalina Curceanu (1) , Hexi Shi , Sergio Bartalucci , Sergio Bertolucci , Massimiliano Bazzi , Carolina Berucci , Mario Bragadireanu , Michael Cargnelli , Alberto Clozza , Luca de Paolis , Sergio Di Matteo (2) , Jean-Pierre Egger , Carlo Guaraldo , Mihail Iliescu , Johann Marton , Matthias Laubenstein , Edoardo Milotti , Marco Miliucci , Andreas Pichler , Dorel Pietreanu , Kristian Piscicchia , Alessandro Scordo , Diana Laura Sirghi , Florin Sirghi , Laura Sperandio , Oton Vazquez Doce , Eberhard Widmann , Johann Zmeskal

1 Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati dell’INFN
2 IPR - Institut de Physique de Rennes

The validity of the Pauli exclusion principle-a building block of Quantum Mechanics-is tested for electrons. The VIP (violation of Pauli exclusion principle) and its follow-up VIP-2 experiments at the Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso search for X-rays from copper atomic transitions that are prohibited by the Pauli exclusion principle. The candidate events-if they exist-originate from the transition of a 2p orbit electron to the ground state which is already occupied by two electrons. The present limit on the probability for Pauli exclusion principle violation for electrons set by the VIP experiment is 4.7 X 10(-29). We report a first result from the VIP-2 experiment improving on the VIP limit, which solidifies the final goal of achieving a two orders of magnitude gain in the long run.

Mots clés: pauli exclusion principle; quantum foundations; x-ray spectroscopy; underground experiment; silicon drift detector

Domaines: Physique [physics]

Catalina Curceanu, Hexi Shi, Sergio Bartalucci, Sergio Bertolucci, Massimiliano Bazzi, et al.. Test of the Pauli Exclusion Principle in the VIP-2 Underground Experiment. Entropy, 2017, 19 (7), pp.300. ⟨10.3390/e19070300⟩. ⟨hal-01578399⟩