Parastatistics is an exotic type of exchange statistics beyond fermions and bosons. Paraparticles transform in higher dimensional representations of the exchange symmetry group, analogous to non-Abelian anyons, yet consistently defined in any dimension. Although paraparticles have long been proposed, they were widely believed to be physically equivalent to fermions or bosons. Nevertheless, a recent paper proposed a different theory, called
R-parastatistics, and demonstrated that nontrivial
R-paraparticles can emerge as quasiparticles in condensed matter systems, and are observably distinct from both fermions and bosons. This paper develops the theoretical foundation and several extensions of
R-parastatistics, with particular emphasis on its observable consequences. Central to this paper is a general theory of local observables extending the basic family introduced before. First, we define local observables that distinguish particle types. Second, we formulate local observables at special point defects that probe the internal indices of
R-paraparticles, crucial for observing
R-parastatistics and for the proposed applications in quantum information. Third, we introduce local observables that create or annihilate particle-antiparticle pairs, important for building a relativistic quantum field theory for
R-paraparticles. We further introduce generalized hidden symmetries that act on internal indices of
R-paraparticles while preserving the local observable algebra, providing a basis for proving local indistinguishability and for connecting to a categorical description of
R-paraparticles. This work sets a solid theoretical foundation for understanding the fundamental physical properties of
R-paraparticles and pave the way for finding them in nature.
Possible generalizations of the statistics of identical particles, parastatistics, and the corresponding theories of parafields are reviewed. The connection between parastatistics and cases of degeneracy of particles with respect to an internal degree of freedom is discussed, and also the restrictions that are imposed on internal symmetries if they are given a parafield description. In particular, the difference between the hypotheses of ''three-color'' quarks and ''paraquarks'' is discussed.
We analyze the concept of entanglement for a multipartite system with bosonic and fermionic constituents and its generalization to systems with arbitrary parastatistics. We use the representation theory of symmetry groups to formulate a unified approach to this problem in terms of simple tensors with an appropriate symmetry. For an arbitrary parastatistics, we define the S-rank generalizing the notion of the Schmidt rank. The S-rank, defined for all types of tensors, serves for distinguishing entanglement of pure states. In addition, for Bose and Fermi statistics, we construct an analog of the Jamiołkowski isomorphism.