ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Fock space

Okay, imagine you have a bunch of toys - maybe some blocks, cars, and dolls. You can organize them in different ways - putting all the blocks together or separating them out, lining up the cars in a row or putting them in a circle, and grouping the dolls by color or size.

Now, let's say you also have some imaginary friends. Each one of them likes to play with different toys - maybe one only likes blocks, another only likes cars, and the third only likes dolls. But they also like to play with multiple toys at once - so they might want a few blocks, a car or two, and a doll.

A Fock space is like a way to organize all these different possibilities of how your imaginary friends can use the toys. It's like a giant toy box that can hold all the different combinations of toys your friends might want to play with at once.

To make this toy box, we start by taking the "vacuum state" - which is just an empty box. Then, for each type of toy (blocks, cars, and dolls), we make a new box that can hold any number of that type of toy. We call these boxes "creation operators" because they let us create new instances of each toy.

Now, let's say your first imaginary friend wants to play with one block, one car, and one doll. We can use the creation operators to fill the Fock space with those toys, like so:

1. Start with the vacuum state (empty box)
2. Use the "block creation operator" to create one block - now our box has one block in it
3. Use the "car creation operator" to create one car - now our box has one block and one car in it
4. Use the "doll creation operator" to create one doll - now our box has one block, one car, and one doll in it

This is just one possibility - your imaginary friend might want more or less of each toy, or want to play with different toys altogether. But we can use the Fock space to keep track of all the possible ways they might want to play.

In the end, a Fock space is really just a way to organize and keep track of all the different combinations of things that can happen in a certain system - in this case, your toy box and your imaginary friends. It's called a "space" because it's like a big container that can hold all the different possibilities.