In the usual tensor product notation, symmetric and antisymmetric states become quite cumbersome to deal with when the number of particles is large. We will now introduce a formalism called second qua...In the usual tensor product notation, symmetric and antisymmetric states become quite cumbersome to deal with when the number of particles is large. We will now introduce a formalism called second quantization, which greatly simplifies manipulations of such multi-particle states. (The reason for the name “second quantization” will not be apparent until later; it is a bad name, but one we are stuck with for historical reasons.)
