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Clarification of braiding statistics in Fabry–Perot interferometry

Nature Physics volume 20, pages 381–382 (2024)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 03 September 2020

arising from J. Nakamura et al. Nature Physics https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-1019-1 (2020)

In a recent paper1, Nakamura et al. performed a groundbreaking experiment using Fabry–Perot interferometry that involved fractionally charged quasiparticles in the fractional quantum Hall effect at filling factor 1/3. The results provide strong evidence that the quasiparticles obey fractional exchange (or braiding) statistics, meaning that they are anyons2. Furthermore, the phase slips measured in the experiment agree with the theoretical prediction, \({\theta }_{{\rm{anyon}}}\equiv {\theta }_\mathrm{a}=2{{\uppi }}/3\) (modulo 2π) (refs. 2,3), within experimental accuracy. As we will explain, there is a more fundamental theoretical quantity θ, where θa = 2θ (modulo 2π), so the experiment finds that, modulo 2π, θ must be close either to π/3 or to 4π/3. It is of theoretical interest to remove this remaining ambiguity by π, because it is θ that fully characterizes the braiding statistics.

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Acknowledgements

N.R. thanks the organizers of the Nobel Symposium on anyons held in June 2023, at which M. Manfra gave a very clear presentation of his group’s work, and also thanks M. Manfra for discussions that helped improve the presentation of this note.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Nicholas Read

  2. Department of Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Nicholas Read

  3. Condensed Matter Theory Center, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Sankar Das Sarma

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N.R. conceived the comment and discussed it with S.D.S. Both authors contributed to writing the piece.

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Correspondence to Nicholas Read.

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Read, N., Das Sarma, S. Clarification of braiding statistics in Fabry–Perot interferometry. Nat. Phys. 20, 381–382 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-023-02309-8

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