  Optical traps and lattices provide a new opportunity to study strongly
correlated high spin systems with cold atoms. In this article, we review the
recent progress on the hidden symmetry properties in the simplest high spin
fermionic systems with hyperfine spin $F=3/2$, which may be realized with atoms
of $^{132}$Cs, $^9$Be, $^{135}$Ba, $^{137}$Ba, and $^{201}$Hg. A {\it generic}
SO(5) or isomorphically, $Sp(4)$) symmetry is proved in such systems with the
s-wave scattering interactions in optical traps, or with the on-site Hubbard
interactions in optical lattices. Various important features from this high
symmetry are studied in the Fermi liquid theory, the mean field phase diagram,
and the sign problem in quantum Monte-Carlo simulations. In the s-wave quintet
Cooper pairing phase, the half-quantum vortex exhibits the global analogue of
the Alice string and non-Abelian Cheshire charge properties in gauge theories.
The existence of the quartetting phase, a four-fermion counterpart of the
Cooper pairing phase, and its competition with other orders are studied in one
dimensional spin-3/2 systems. We also show that counter-intuitively quantum
fluctuations in spin-3/2 magnetic systems are even stronger than those in
spin-1/2 systems.
