Flux-carrying fermions and the second virial coefficient

Abstract

The second virial coefficient ${\mathrm{B}}_{2}$ for a system of spin-one-half flux-carrying fermions is computed. It is found that there arise significant differences from known results for the corresponding spinless system. Apart from the existence of cusps and a restricted periodicity of ${\mathrm{B}}_{2}$ when viewed as a function of the flux parameter \ensuremath{\alpha}, one obtains here the remarkable result that there exist discontinuities in ${\mathrm{B}}_{2}$ at all even, nonzero values of \ensuremath{\alpha}.