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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 61: Quanteninformation (Photonen und nichtklassisches Licht II)

Q 61.6: Talk

Friday, March 14, 2008, 15:15–15:30, 1A

Experimental demonstration of anyonic statistics with multiphoton entanglement — •Witlef Wieczorek^1,2, Jiannis Pachos³, Christian Schmid^1,2, Nikolai Kiesel^1,2, Reinhold Pohlner^1,2, and Harald Weinfurter^1,2 — ¹Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, D-85748 Garching — ²Department für Physik, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, D-80799 München — ³School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Particles in nature appear as two distinct types according to their statistics: bosons and fermions. However, if one considers only two spatial dimensions statistical behaviour ranging from bosonic to fermionic is found. Particles exhibiting such a behaviour are called anyons. Our experimental demonstration of their statistics is based on a particular two-dimensional model: the toric code proposed by Kitaev [1]. There, anyons arise as excitations that are generated by local operations. We show that for this model anyonic behaviour is revealed for as little as four qubits. This allowed us to experimentally demonstrate anyonic statistics in a quantum simulation using four-photon entanglement [2].

[1] A.Y. Kitaev, Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 303, 2-30 (2003).

[2] J.K. Pachos et al., e-print arXiv: 0710.0895 (2007).