terminology - Is Pauli-repulsion a "force" that is completely separate from the 4 fundamental forces?

You can have two electrons that experience each other's force by the exchange of photons (i.e. the electromagnetic force). Yet if you compress them really strongly, the electromagnetic interaction will no longer be the main force pushing them apart to balance the force that pushes them towards each other. Instead, you get a a repulsive force as a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle. As I have read so far, this seems like a "force" that is completely separate from the other well known forces like the strong, electroweak and gravitational interaction (even though the graviton hasn't been observed so far).

So my question is: is Pauli-repulsion a phenomenon that has also not yet been explained in terms of any of the three other forces that we know of?

Note: does this apply to degenerate pressure too (which was explained to me as $\Delta p$ increasing because $\Delta x$ became smaller because the particles are confined to a smaller space (Heisenberg u.p.), as is what happens when stars collapse)?

Answer

The pauli exclusion principle is not a repulsive force. It applies to fermions. It says that two electrons cannot occupy an energy state in a potential well with exactly the same quantum numbers. They have to differ by at least one quantum number. It is the Pauli exclusion principle that organizes the electron shells filling them sequentially from low to higher energy levels in atoms, otherwise they would all pile up at the lowest energy level. Also the periodic table of elements filling the baryons in the strong potential well. It makes matter as we know it.

Yet if you compress them really strongly, the electromagnetic interaction will no longer be the main force pushing them apart to balance the force that pushes them towards each other. Instead, you get a a repulsive force as a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle.

The above is a misunderstanding.

It is not a force, since at the particle level forces have carriers that are exchanged between particles so that momentum and energy change.

In your "compression" description there is a continuum and not a quantized state so the PEP does not apply. When one scatters an electron on an electron one can get very close until the exchange particle ( the photon in this case)

transfers enough energy in the center of mass system to start creating other elementary particles. The process is accurately described by quantum electrodynamics.