L23.3 Permutation operators on N particles and transpositions
PROFESSOR: Two particles is interesting in many cases. But in order to see what really is happening and how much structure you have to go to more than two particles. Two particles is a little too special. So we need to go beyond two particles and see what happens with this operator. So I'll do that. So we'll add more particles. So let's do that. So if you have n particles, n particles, capital n, we can consider also permutations. And how many permutations are you going to have? You're going to have n factorial permutations. And notation of Hilbert space, n factorial permutation operators. So why you say n factorial? Because a permutation is a reordering of your n objects. And therefore, in order to define the reordering, you must decide which object is going to be the new first. You have your n objects there. So you have n choices to pick a first and n minus 1 choices to be a second, n minus 2. So n factorial is the number of permutations. The permutation...