title: Demonstrating anyonic fractional statistics with a six-qubit quantum simulator.
abstract: Anyons are exotic quasiparticles living in two dimensions that do not fit into the usual categories of fermions and bosons, but obey a new form of fractional statistics. Following a recent proposal [Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 150404 (2007)], we present an experimental demonstration of the fractional statistics of anyons in the Kitaev spin lattice model using a photonic quantum simulator. We dynamically create the ground state and excited states (which are six-qubit graph states) of the Kitaev model Hamiltonian, and implement the anyonic braiding and fusion operations by single-qubit rotations. A phase shift of pi related to the anyon braiding is observed, confirming the prediction of the fractional statistics of Abelian 1/2 anyons.
authors.affiliation: Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China.
authors.forename: Chao-Yang
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Wei-Bo
authors.initials: WB
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Otfried
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Gühne
authors.forename: Xiao-Qi
authors.initials: XQ
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Zeng-Bing
authors.initials: ZB
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Jian-Wei
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Pan