Decoherence of Anyonic Charge in Interferometry Measurements

Abstract

We examine interferometric measurements of the topological charge of (non-Abelian) anyons. The target's topological charge is measured from its effect on the interference of probe particles sent through the interferometer. We find that superpositions of distinct anyonic charges a and a' in the target decohere (exponentially in the number of probes particles used) when the probes have nontrivial monodromy with the charges that may be fused with a to give a'.

5 pages, 1 figure; v2: reference added, example added, clarifying changes made to conform to the version published in PRL

References in corpus (2)

• Detecting Non-Abelian Statistics in the nu=5/2 Fractional Quantum Hall State
• Realization of a Laughlin quasiparticle interferometer: Observation of fractional statistics

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• Anyons and the quantum Hall effect - a pedagogical review
• Condensate induced transitions between topologically ordered phases
• Measurement-Only Topological Quantum Computation
• Interferometry of non-Abelian Anyons
• The non-Abelian Interferometer
• Measurement-Only Topological Quantum Computation via Anyonic Interferometry