spin

intrinsic form of angular momentum as a property of quantum particles

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Spin is a fundamental property of tiny particles like electrons and photons that causes them to behave as if they're rotating, even though they don't physically spin like objects do in everyday life. It matters because spin determines how particles interact with magnetic fields and with each other, making it essential to understanding the structure of atoms, magnetism, and the behavior of matter itself.

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Image: "Father" and "Mother" of the series "Spin Family".jpg

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Stack Exchange tag: physics.stackexchange.com/tags/quantum-spin
Commons category: Spin (intrinsic angular momentum)

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Spin is an intrinsic form of angular momentum carried by elementary particles, and thus by composite particles such as hadrons, atomic nuclei, and atoms. Spin is quantized, and accurate models for the interaction with spin require relativistic quantum mechanics or quantum field theory.

The existence of electron spin angular momentum is inferred from experiments, such as the Stern–Gerlach experiment, in which silver atoms were observed to possess two possible discrete angular momenta despite having no orbital angular momentum. The relativistic spin–statistics theorem connects electron spin quantization to the Pauli exclusion principle: observations of exclusion imply half-integer spin, and observations of half-integer spin imply exclusion.