Descripción del proyecto
Descubrir los secretos de los anyones
En el complejo mundo de la física cuántica, el peculiar comportamiento de las partículas constituye todo un rompecabezas. En los sistemas tridimensionales, las partículas se dividen en fermiones y bosones, mientras que en los bidimensionales aparece nuevas partículas, los anyones. Los anyones desafían las reglas convencionales, ya que su fase de intercambio puede adquirir cualquier valor y presentan exclusión parcial. Teniendo esto en cuenta, en el proyecto ASTEC, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, se empleará un colisionador a nanoescala para investigar cuantitativamente las estadísticas de los anyones. Su equipo se centrará en la protección topológica para examinar el efecto Hall cuántico fraccionario, con el objetivo de revelar los misterios de los anyones no abelianos. A medida que nos adentramos en territorios inexplorados, el proyecto ASTEC promete un gran avance en la comprensión, preparando el camino para la computación cuántica topológicamente protegida.
Objetivo
In three dimensional systems, elementary particles are divided exclusively between fermions (which exclude each others) and bosons (which bunch together) according to the phase acquired by the wavefunction when two particles are exchanged. The situation is different in two-dimensional systems which can host new particles called anyons, for which the exchange phase can take any value, and which obey partial exclusion, between fermions and bosons. Interestingly, these quasiparticles keep a memory of the exchanges between them that is protected from local perturbations of their trajectories: one speaks of topological protection. This protection is at the heart of the interest for anyons, as specific types of anyons called non-abelian are the building blocks of topological quantum computing that would be protected from decoherence.
The existence of these quasiparticles was predicted forty years ago in two-dimensional conductors in the fractional quantum Hall regime. However, despite intense experimental and theoretical efforts, direct signatures of their fractional statistics have only been observed recently, offering only now the possibility to characterize fractional statistics and to exploit it for new functionalities.
The purpose of this project is to quantitatively investigate the statistics of anyons by probing their tendency to bunch together or exclude each others in a nanoscale collider. The different phases of the fractional quantum Hall effect offer a very vast and almost completely unexplored variety of anyons. I will characterize the differences between different statistics, including the most interesting non-abelian case. I will also investigate the robustness of the signatures of fractional statistics and to which extent they can be considered as topologically protected. Finally, I will probe anyon statistics in the time-domain regime, where anyon emission is dynamically controlled, which is a necessary condition for quantum information perspectives.
Ámbito científico
- natural sciencesphysical sciencestheoretical physicsparticle physicsparticle accelerator
- natural sciencesphysical sciencestheoretical physicsparticle physicsfermions
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcomputer hardwarequantum computers
Programa(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Régimen de financiación
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitución de acogida
75006 Paris
Francia