Classification of Paraparticles

Hartle and Taylor have shown that the cluster law imposes certain restrictions on the allowed symmetries of first-quantized systems of identical particles. We extend their results to show that all particles which are neither bosons nor fermions and which obey the cluster law can be divided into two classes, those of finite order, and those of infinite order. For every positive integer $p$ there are two types of finite-order particle, which we call parabosons and parafermions of order $p$. Ordinary bosons and fermions can be fitted into this scheme as particles of order 1. We conjecture that the finite-order particles can be identified with the parafermions and parabosons of the second-quantized, parafield theory. Infinite-order particles would seem to have no analog in the second-quantized theory, as presently formulated.