Non-Abelian Anyons: Statistical Repulsion and Topological Quantum Computation

Sammanfattning: As opposed to classical mechanics, quantum mechanical particles can be truly identical and lead to new and interesting phenomena. Identical particles can be of different types, determined by their exchange symmetry, which in turn gives rise to statistical repulsion. The exchange symmetry is given by a representation of the exchange group; the fundamental group of the configuration space of identical particles. In three dimensions the exchange group is the permutation group and there are only two types of identical particles; bosons and fermions. While any number of bosons can be at the same place or in the same state, fermions repel each other. In two dimensions the exchange group is the braid group and essentially any exchange symmetry is allowed, such particles are called anyons. Abelian anyons are described by abelian representations of the exchange group and can be seen as giving a continuous interpolation between bosons and fermions. Non-abelian anyons are much more complex and their statistical repulsion is yet largely unexplored. We use the framework of modular tensor categories to show how the statistical repulsion of non-abelian anyons depends on the exchange symmetry.  The Fibonacci anyon model is studied, for which explicit results are obtained. We also show how Fibonacci anyons can be used to implement topological quantum computation, providing topologically stable quantum information encoded in the state of non-abelian anyons that can be manipulated via the non-abelian exchange symmetry.