Intermediate statistics interpolating from Bose statistics to Fermi statistics are allowed in two dimensions. This is due to the particular topology of the two dimensional configuration space of identical particles, leading to non trivial braiding of particles around each other. One arrives at quantum many-body states with a multivalued phase factor, which encodes the any- onic nature of particle windings. Bosons and fermions appear as two limiting cases. Gauging away the phase leads to the so-called anyon model, where the charge of each particle interacts “à la Aharonov-Bohm” with the fluxes carried by the other particles. The multivaluedness of the wave function has been traded off for topological interactions between ordinary particles. An alternative Lagrangian formulation uses a topological Chern-Simons term in 2+1 dimensions. Taking into account the short distance repulsion between particles leads to an Hamiltonian well defined in perturbation theory, where all perturbative divergences have disappeared. Together with numerical and semi-classical studies, perturbation theory is a basic analytical tool at disposal to study the model, since finding the exact N-body spectrum seems out of reach (except in the 2-body case which is solvable, or for particular classes of N-body eigenstates which generalize some 2-body eigenstates). However, a simplification arises when the anyons are coupled to an external homogeneous magnetic field. In the case of a strong field, by projecting the system on its lowest Landau level (LLL, thus the LLL-anyon model), the anyon model becomes solvable, i.e., the classes of exact eigenstates alluded to above provide for a complete interpolation from the LLL-Bose spectrum to the LLL-Fermi spectrum. Being a solvable model allows for an explicit knowledge of the equation of state and of the mean occupation number in the LLL, which do interpolate from the Bose to the Fermi cases. It also provides for a combinatorial interpretation of LLL-anyon braiding statistics in terms of occupation of single particle states. The LLL-anyon model might also be relevant experimentally: a gas of electrons in a strong magnetic field is known to exhibit a quantized Hall conductance, leading to the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects. Haldane/exclusion statistics, introduced to describe FQHE edge excitations, is a priori different from anyon statistics, since it is not defined by braiding considerations, but rather by counting arguments in the space of available states. However, it has been shown to lead to the same kind of thermodynamics as the LLL-anyon thermodynamics (or, in other words, the LLL-anyon model is a microscopic quantum mechanical realization of Hal- dane’s statistics). The one dimensional Calogero model is also shown to have the same kind of thermodynamics as the LLL-anyons thermodynamics. This is not a coincidence: the LLL-anyon model and the Calogero model are intimately related, the latter being a particular limit of the former. Finally, on the purely combinatorial side, the minimal difference partition problem — partition of integers with minimal difference constraints on their parts — can also be mapped on an abstract exclusion statistics model with a constant one-body density of states, which is neither the LLL-anyon model nor the Calogero model. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Intermediate statistics interpolating from Bose statistics to Fermi statistics are allowed in two dimensions. This is due to the particular topology of the two dimensional configuration space of identical particles, leading to non trivial braiding of particles around each other. One arrives at quantum many-body states with a multivalued phase factor, which encodes the any- onic nature of particle windings. Bosons and fermions appear as two limiting cases. Gauging away the phase leads to the so-called anyon model, where the charge of each particle interacts “à la Aharonov-Bohm” with the fluxes carried by the other particles. The multivaluedness of the wave function has been traded off for topological interactions between ordinary particles. An alternative Lagrangian formulation uses a topological Chern-Simons term in 2+1 dimensions. Taking into account the short distance repulsion between particles leads to an Hamiltonian well defined in perturbation theory, where all perturbative divergences have disappeared. Together with numerical and semi-classical studies, perturbation theory is a basic analytical tool at disposal to study the model, since finding the exact N-body spectrum seems out of reach (except in the 2-body case which is solvable, or for particular classes of N-body eigenstates which generalize some 2-body eigenstates). However, a simplification arises when the anyons are coupled to an external homogeneous magnetic field. In the case of a strong field, by projecting the system on its lowest Landau level (LLL, thus the LLL-anyon model), the anyon model becomes solvable, i.e., the classes of exact eigenstates alluded to above provide for a complete interpolation from the LLL-Bose spectrum to the LLL-Fermi spectrum. Being a solvable model allows for an explicit knowledge of the equation of state and of the mean occupation number in the LLL, which do interpolate from the Bose to the Fermi cases. It also provides for a combinatorial interpretation of LLL-anyon braiding statistics in terms of occupation of single particle states. The LLL-anyon model might also be relevant experimentally: a gas of electrons in a strong magnetic field is known to exhibit a quantized Hall conductance, leading to the integer and fractional quantum Hall effects. Haldane/exclusion statistics, introduced to describe FQHE edge excitations, is a priori different from anyon statistics, since it is not defined by braiding considerations, but rather by counting arguments in the space of available states. However, it has been shown to lead to the same kind of thermodynamics as the LLL-anyon thermodynamics (or, in other words, the LLL-anyon model is a microscopic quantum mechanical realization of Hal- dane’s statistics). The one dimensional Calogero model is also shown to have the same kind of thermodynamics as the LLL-anyons thermodynamics. This is not a coincidence: the LLL-anyon model and the Calogero model are intimately related, the latter being a particular limit of the former. Finally, on the purely combinatorial side, the minimal difference partition problem — partition of integers with minimal difference constraints on their parts — can also be mapped on an abstract exclusion statistics model with a constant one-body density of states, which is neither the LLL-anyon model nor the Calogero model. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The quantum-mechanical description of assemblies of particles whose motion is confined to two (or one) spatial dimensions offers many possibilities that are distinct from bosons and fermions. We call such particles anyons. The simplest anyons are parameterized by an angular phase parameter θ. θ=0,π correspond to bosons and fermions respectively; at intermediate values we say that we have fractional statistics. In two dimensions, θ describes the phase acquired by the wave function as two anyons wind around one another counterclockwise. It generates a shift in the allowed values for the relative angular momentum. Composites of localized electric charge and magnetic flux associated with an abelian U(1) gauge group realize this behavior. More complex charge-flux constructions can involve non-abelian and product groups acting on a spectrum of allowed charges and fluxes, giving rise to nonabelian and mutual statistics. Interchanges of non-abelian anyons implement unitary transformations of the wave function within an emergent space of internal states. Anyons of all kinds are described by quantum field theories that include Chern--Simons terms. The crossings of one-dimensional anyons on a ring are uni-directional, such that a fractional phase θ acquired upon interchange gives rise to fractional shifts in the relative momenta between the anyons. The quasiparticle excitations of fractional quantum Hall states have long been predicted to include anyons. Recently the anyon behavior predicted for quasiparticles in the ν=1/3 fractional quantum Hall state has been observed both in scattering and in interferometric experiments. Excitations within designed systems, notably including superconducting circuits, can exhibit anyon behavior. Such systems are being developed for possible use in quantum information processing.
The quantum-mechanical description of assemblies of particles whose motion is confined to two (or one) spatial dimensions offers many possibilities that are distinct from bosons and fermions. We call such particles anyons. The simplest anyons are parameterized by an angular phase parameter θ. θ = 0, π correspond to bosons and fermions, respectively; at intermediate values, we say that we have fractional statistics. In two dimensions, θ describes the phase acquired by the wave function as two anyons wind around one another counterclockwise. It generates a shift in the allowed values for the relative angular momentum. Composites of localized electric charge and magnetic flux associated with an abelian U(1) gauge group realize this behavior. More complex charge-flux constructions can involve nonabelian and product groups acting on a spectrum of allowed charges and fluxes, giving rise to nonabelian and mutual statistics. Interchanges of nonabelian anyons implement unitary transformations of the wave function within an emergent space of internal states. Anyons of all kinds are described by quantum field theories that include Chern–Simons terms. The crossings of one-dimensional anyons on a ring are unidirectional, such that a fractional phase θ acquired upon interchange gives rise to fractional shifts in the relative momenta between the anyons. The quasiparticle excitations of fractional quantum Hall states have long been predicted to include anyons. Recently, the anyon behavior predicted for quasiparticles in the ν = 1/3 fractional quantum Hall state has been observed in both scattering and interferometric experiments. Excitations within designed systems, notably including superconducting circuits, can exhibit anyon behavior. Such systems are being developed for possible use in quantum information processing.
Anyons obeying fractional exchange statistics arise naturally in two dimensions: Hard-core two-body constraints make the configuration space of particles not simply-connected. The braid group describes how topologically-inequivalent exchange paths can be associated to non-trivial geometric phases for abelian anyons. Braid-anyon exchange statistics can also be found in one dimension (1D), but this requires broken Galilean invariance to distinguish different ways for two anyons to exchange. However, recently it was shown that an alternative form of exchange statistics can occur in 1D because hard-core three-body constraints also make the configuration space not simply-connected. Instead of the braid group, the topology of exchange paths and their associated non-trivial geometric phases are described by the traid group. In this article we propose a first concrete model realizing this alternative form of anyonic exchange statistics. Starting from a bosonic lattice model that implements the desired geometric phases with number-dependent Peierls phases, we then define anyonic operators so that the kinetic energy term in the Hamiltonian becomes local and quadratic with respect to them. The ground-state of this traid-anyon-Hubbard model exhibits several indications of exchange statistics intermediate between bosons and fermions, as well as signs of emergent approximate Haldane exclusion statistics. The continuum limit results in a Galilean invariant Hamiltonian with eigenstates that correspond to previously constructed continuum wave functions for traid anyons. This provides not only an a-posteriori justification of our lattice model, but also shows that our construction serves as an intuitive approach to traid anyons, i.e. anyons intrinsic to 1D.
We develop a density functional treatment of noninteracting Abelian anyons, which is capable, in principle, of dealing with a system of a large number of anyons in an external potential. Comparison with exact results for a few particles shows that the model captures the behavior qualitatively and semiquantitatively, especially in the vicinity of the fermionic statistics. We then study anyons with statistics parameter 1+1/n, which are thought to condense into a superconducting state. An indication of the superconducting behavior is the mean-field result that, for uniform density systems, the ground-state energy increases under the application of an external magnetic field independent of its direction. Our density functional theory based analysis does not find that to be the case for finite systems of anyons, which can accommodate a weak external magnetic field through density transfer between the bulk and the boundary rather than through transitions across effective Landau levels, but the ``Meissner repulsion'' of the external magnetic field is recovered in the thermodynamic limit as the effect of the boundary becomes negligible. We also consider the quantum Hall effect of anyons, and show that its topological properties, such as the charge and statistics of the excitations and the quantized Hall conductance, arise in a self-consistent fashion.
The general formulation of quantum statistical mechanics hints at interesting generalizations of the usual Bose/Fermi framework in two spatial dimensions. Anyon statistics, which is essentially a continuous interpolation between Bose and Fermi statistics, is relevant to the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect in two-dimensional (i.e., thin layer) condensed matter systems. In addition, the possibility of non-abelian statistics, in which the multi-particle wavefunction transforms as a representation of a non-abelian group under the exchange of indistinguishable particles, has been explored. Spontaneously broken non-abelian gauge theories in (2 + 1) dimensions often have stable topological defects, called non-abelian vortices, that experience non-abelian statistics. In addition, it has been suggested that degenerate quasihole multiplets in Quantum Hall systems also transform as non-abelian representations of the braid group under particle exchange. In this thesis, I explore the braiding properties of systems of two-cycle flux vortices in a residual S₃ discrete gauge group. The individual vortices are uncharged, but multi-vortex states can have Cheshire charge. The uncharged sectors all have non-vanishing bosonic subspaces, as do the non-abelian charged trivial flux sectors. A kinetic Hamiltonian for vortices on a periodic lattice is constructed. There is a modification to the translational symmetry in the periodically identified direction for non-trivial Z₂ charged sectors. The ground state energies for various three and four vortex sectors is numerically determined. Typically, the ground state is bosonic, with a gap separating it from a non-abelian subspace.
"Anyonic quantum statistics is an exotic phenomenon of identical particles in quantum mechanics. When particles are confined in two spatial dimensions, exchanges of identical particles can induce phase factors in the wave function of Abelian anyons or matrix valued transformations of the wave function of non-Abelian anyons. As a result, systems of anyons may have richer properties than those of bosons and fermions in three spatial dimensions. There is strong theoretical support for the existence of anyons in some engineered two-dimensional systems such as 2D electron gases, strongly correlated spin lattices and as edge modes of nanowires. In the future, anyons could be used in topological quantum computation to perform highly efficient information processing with very small error rates. The phases of matter described by dynamically interacting anyons have recently been studied in chains where anyons interact via Heisenberg-type exchange interactions. In this thesis, new kind of anyonic interactions are studied, induced purely by braiding during free evolution. Such interactions are of topological origin, and the information about the interactions is stored non-locally. A quantum walk model is used to study the effects of these braiding interactions on the dynamical behaviour of anyons. The anyonic quantum walk is a quasi-one-dimensional generalization of the discrete-time quantum walk which allows the simulation of anyonic dynamics analytically. The moving anyon and a chain of stationary anyons interact via braiding statistics, and the behaviour of the anyon is studied in three cases. Striking differences are found between particles with conventional boson or fermion statistics and non-Abelian anyonic statistics. The random walk is a dynamical model that describes the motion of a particle on a lattice. In physics, it is used to describe Brownian motion of fluids and gases. In such systems, energy transport is diffusive, and the order of the system approaches a highly mixed state without any information content. The quantum version of the random walk, the quantum walk, has nonintuitive properties. Generally, the information content in a unitarily evolving system is fixed, which leads to unexpected transport phenomena. An initially localized particle does not propagate diffusively, but escapes the starting point with ballistic speed. Most of our results for non-Abelian anyons use the Ising model anyon which is most likely to be measured in experiments. First, when each anyonic site is occupied by one Ising anyon, the propagation of the anyon becomes diffusive. More precisely, the variance of the spatial probability distribution of the particle depends linearly on the number of time steps. This is in stark contrast to bosons, fermions and Abelian anyons which propagate ballistically, and the variance depends linearly on the square of the number of time steps. The essential reason for this slowdown is that the non-Abelian anyons possess an extra degree of freedom called the fusion Hilbert space. This space can be viewed as an environment for the normal degrees of freedom of the particle, inducing decoherence in the quantum walk. This thesis opens the line for studies of this novel kind of decoherence mechanism in quantum walks. In the second case the study is extended to more general anyon models by losing some of the information about the history of the evolution. In this case the system is subject to decoherence, and the total system evolution is not unitary. The behaviour of the particle in this model is found to be diffusive for all the non-Abelian anyon models studied, while Abelian anyons behave ballistically also in this model. One peculiarity of quantum systems is their behaviour under disorder. Quantum mechanical particles moving in random local potentials are known to freeze and not move at all. Such a phenomenon is known as Anderson localization. Studies have shown that Anderson localization happens also in quantum walks with random spatial fluctuations in the coin parameters. In the third case, the transport properties of anyons are studied under topological randomness, allowing the occupations of anyons change between experiments. Bosons and fermions would propagate ballistically under such randomness, and Abelian anyons are shown to localize. The results show that non-Abelian anyons behave diffusively at short time scales, and it is argued that they do so in the long time limit as well. In all cases, non-Abelian anyons are shown to have very different dynamical properties than bosons, fermions and Abelian anyons. A possible simulation of the anyonic quantum walk in Fractional Quantum Hall systems is also discussed.