Fermionic field
In quantum field theory, a fermionic field is a quantum field whose quanta are fermions; that is, they obey Fermi–Dirac statistics. Fermionic fields obey canonical anticommutation relations rather than the canonical commutation relations of bosonic fields.
The most prominent example of a fermionic field is the Dirac field, which describes fermions with spin-1/2: electrons, protons, quarks, etc. The Dirac field can be described as either a 4-component spinor or as a pair of 2-component Weyl spinors. Spin-1/2 Majorana fermions, such as the hypothetical neutralino, can be described as either a dependent 4-component Majorana spinor or a single 2-component Weyl spinor. It is not known whether the neutrino is a Majorana fermion or a Dirac fermion (see also Neutrinoless double-beta decay for experimental efforts to determine this).
Basic properties
Free (non-interacting) fermionic fields obey canonical anticommutation relations, i.e., involve the anticommutators {a,b} = ab + ba rather than the commutators [a,b] = ab − ba of bosonic or standard quantum mechanics. Those relations also hold for interacting fermionic fields in the interaction picture, where the fields evolve in time as if free and the effects of the interaction are encoded in the evolution of the states.
