Processes in Elixir are lightweight, isolated units of computation managed by the BEAM VM. Each process has its own state and communicates via message passing, enabling concurrent programming.

Processes in Elixir are a fundamental concept that enables concurrent programming, allowing developers to build highly scalable applications. Unlike traditional threads, Elixir processes are lightweight and managed by the BEAM virtual machine, which efficiently schedules and executes them. Each process has its own isolated state, meaning that it cannot directly access the state of other processes. Instead, processes communicate with each other through message passing, which promotes safe and reliable interaction between concurrent units of work. When a process wants to send a message, it uses the send/2 function, specifying the recipient's PID (process identifier) and the message content. The receiving process can handle incoming messages in its own loop, processing them as they arrive. This model of communication helps prevent race conditions and allows developers to reason about their code more effectively. Additionally, processes can be organized hierarchically using supervision trees, which monitor and manage the lifecycle of processes, enhancing fault tolerance. By leveraging Elixir's lightweight processes and message-passing capabilities, developers can create applications that efficiently handle high levels of concurrency while maintaining clean and maintainable code.