[Seminar] "Non-Abelian Anyons in the Fractional Quantum Hall Effect" by Prof. Woowon Kang

Guest Speaker

Professor Woowon Kang

From the James Franck Institute and Department of Physics, the University of Chicago

https://physics.uchicago.edu/people/profile/woowon-kang/

Abstract

In two spatial dimensions quantum mechanical particles are not limited to being bosons or fermions but can become particles known as anyons. Anyons come in two major flavors: Abelian and non-Abelian. Non-Abelian anyons have received considerable interest in recent years as a possible platform to realize topologically protected qubit. The enigmatic even-denominator fractional quantum Hall effect (FQHE) state at filling of n = 5/2 is postulated to be the most likely candidate for harboring non-Abelian anyons. However, detection of the postulated non-Abelian anyons has been shown to be notoriously difficult. In this talk I will present our recent experimental study of quantum interference experiments of the n = 5/2 FQHE state in the Aharonov-Bohm regime. We observe unambiguous signatures in the interference measurements that support the likely existence of non-Abelian anyons in the n = 5/2 FQHE state.