A perspective on anyonic braiding statistics

Abstract

We comment on the significance of the results in the paper by Nakamura et al (2020). The experimental result measures the phase for a repeated elementary exchange of two identical quasiparticles, and shows that the quasiparticles are anyons. The value of the phase agrees with theoretical predictions. However, in terms of the statistics parameter $\theta$ for a single elementary exchange, it determines $2\theta$ modulo $2\pi$, and hence $\theta$ only modulo $\pi$, not modulo $2\pi$, and so does not fully check the theoretical prediction for the braiding statistics of charge $e/3$ quasiparticles. This is a general shortcoming of this particular type of interference measurement of statistics.

A short (two page) comment, submitted to Nature Physics. v2: title change, few changes to text, two additional references