Boson Boson In quantum mechanics, a boson (, ) is a particle that follows Bose–Einstein statistics. Bosons make up one of the two classes of particles, the other being fermions. The name boson was coined by Paul Dirac to commemorate the contribution of Indian physicist and professor of physics at University of Calcutta and at University of Dhaka, Satyendra Nath Bose in developing, with Albert Einstein, Bose–Einstein statistics—which theorizes the characteristics of elementary particles. Examples of bosons include fundamental particles such as photons, gluons, and W and Z bosons (the four force-carrying gauge bosons of the Standard Model), the recently discovered
Identical particles Identical particles Identical particles, also called indistinguishable or indiscernible particles, are particles that cannot be distinguished from one another, even in principle. Species of identical particles include, but are not limited to elementary particles such as electrons, composite subatomic particles such as atomic nuclei, as well as atoms and molecules. Quasiparticles also behave in this way. Although all known indistinguishable particles are "tiny", there is no exhaustive list of all possible sorts of particles nor a clear-cut limit of applicability, as explored in quantum statistics. There are two main categories of identical particles: bosons, which can share quantum states, and