Abstract
In this essay, quantum entanglement is investigated as a possible cause of the Pauli exclusion principle. First, it is shown that a certain class of rotationally invariant states can only occur in pairs. This is referred to as the coupling principle. This in turn suggests a natural classification of quantum systems into those containing coupled states and those that do not. Surprisingly, it would seem that Fermi-Dirac statistics follows as a consequence of this coupling while the Bose-Einstein follows by breaking it. This in turn requires that we rethink the usual formulation of Pauli's original spin-statistics theorem. Finally, some experimental evidence is presented to justify the approach.
Paul O\'Hara