Ultra-precise test confirms photons are bosons

Edwin Cartlidge at PhysicsWorld writes: ''Physicists in the US have carried out an extremely precise test of the one of the cornerstones of modern physics – the idea that the two types of fundamental particle, bosons and fermions, follow two distinct kinds of statistical behaviour. The laser-based experiment confirmed that photons behave according to Bose–Einstein statistics, narrowing the odds that photons could in fact be fermions by about a factor of 1000 compared with previous tests.'' For more information see <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.253604" target="_blank">PRL paper</a> or its ArXiv version <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.1771" target="_blank">arXiv:1001.1771</a>.