anyon
Sign in to saveIn physics, an anyon is a type of quasiparticle so far observed only in two-dimensional systems. In three-dimensional systems, only two kinds of elementary particles are seen: fermions and bosons. Anyons have statistical properties intermediate between fermions and bosons. In general, the operation of exchanging two identical particles, although it may cause a global phase shift, cannot affect observables. Anyons are generally classified as abelian or non-abelian. Abelian anyons, detected by two experiments in 2020, play a major role in the fractional quantum Hall effect.
~17 min read
Encyclopedic overview
12 sectionsContents
- Introduction
- History
- Abelian anyons
- Topological equivalence
- Experiment
- Non-abelian anyons
- Fusion of anyons
- Topological basis
- Generalization to higher dimensions
- See also
- References
- Further reading
In physics, an anyon is a type of quasiparticle so far observed only in two-dimensional systems. In three-dimensional systems, only two kinds of elementary particles are seen: fermions and bosons. Anyons have statistical properties intermediate between fermions and bosons. In general, the operation of exchanging two identical particles, although it may cause a global phase shift, cannot affect observables. Anyons are generally classified as abelian or non-abelian. Abelian anyons, detected by two experiments in 2020, play a major role in the fractional quantum Hall effect.
== Introduction == The statistical mechanics of large many-body systems obeys laws described by Maxwell–Boltzmann statistics. Quantum statistics is more complicated because of the different behaviors of two different kinds of particles called fermions and bosons. In two-dimensional systems, however, there is a third kind of particle, called an anyon.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “anyon” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.