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On Michele Maggiore book on QFT (page 91) is stated, out of nothing, that "observables are made of an even number of fermionic operator" and similar sentences is in Peskin book (page 56). Is there any physical and mathematical reason for that?

Qmechanic
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Andrea
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1 Answers1

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One explanation is that on one hand an observable should be a quantity/operator that could take a value in a measurement in the form of (a tuple of) ordinary numbers.

On the other hand (an odd product of) fermionic operators is Grassmann-odd. A Grassmann-odd number is an indeterminate/variable, which has no value, cf. e.g. this Phys.SE post.

Qmechanic
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