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  • Featured in Physics
  • Open Access

Slow Quasiparticle Dynamics and Anyonic Statistics in a Fractional Quantum Hall Fabry-Pérot Interferometer

Noah L. Samuelson1,*, Liam A. Cohen1,*, Will Wang1, Simon Blanch1, Takashi Taniguchi2, Kenji Watanabe3, Michael P. Zaletel4,5, and Andrea F. Young1,†

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: andrea@physics.ucsb.edu
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Phys. Rev. X 16, 011062 – Published 23 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/fwjg-mx9h

Abstract

Anyons are two-dimensional particles with fractional exchange statistics that emerge as elementary excitations of fractional quantum Hall phases. Experimentally, their exchange statistics can be measured in the edge-state Fabry-Pérot interferometer, wherein the presence of Nqp localized anyons contributes a phase Nqpθa to the interference pattern where θa is twice the exchange phase. Here we report the observation of large, hysteretic phase jumps in a monolayer graphene Fabry-Pérot interferometer at ν=1/3. When the filling factor is increased from ν<1/3 toward the center of the plateau, we observe phase slips with magnitude Δθ≈2π/3, consistent with the addition of individual quasiparticles to the interferometer bulk. These phase slips occur as instantaneous jumps in the interference signal, with intervals between the jumps indicating quasiparticle equilibration times exceeding 20 min. We use this long timescale to investigate the effect of changes in interferometer area AI and Nqp independently at fixed magnetic field, revealing a striking memory effect in the phase slip magnitude. In particular, as the ν=1/3 plateau is approached from higher filling, we observed phase slips with Δθ significantly larger than 2π/3 over the same range of gate voltage where quantized jumps are seen for increasing ν. We discuss this asymmetry in terms of bulk-edge coupling of quasiparticles localized near the edge or in the bulk, and argue that this effect can be qualitatively reconciled with theoretical expectations for strongly interacting quasiparticles in the presence of weak disorder and strongly nonequilibrium charge dynamics. Besides providing a replication of interferometric measurements sensitive to θa, our results highlight the key role played by charge dynamics on signatures of the anyon phase, and demonstrate that fractional quasiparticles can be indefinitely localized in nonequilibrium configurations.

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Corralling Interfering Anyons

Published 23 March, 2026

A delicate interference experiment elucidates the collective behavior of quasiparticles that are neither bosons nor fermions, but something in between.

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Popular Summary

Anyons are collective excitations of certain strongly interacting phases of matter, with unconventional quantum statistics. Manipulation of individual anyons has been a long-standing goal of condensed matter physics, as some kinds of anyons are thought to enable fault-tolerant quantum information processing; however, their fragility has limited these efforts in the past. Using interferometric detection of the anyon phase, we show that in graphene heterostructures configurations of a fixed number of anyons can be exceptionally stable, with no fluctuations in the anyon number for minutes or hours number despite large perturbations applied to the system via external electric and magnetic fields. These results show that applications involving manipulations of single charged anyons for quantum information processing are an immediate possibility.

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Phys. Rev. X 16, 011062– Published 23 March, 2026
  • Received 11 July 2025
  • Revised 10 October 2025
  • Accepted 8 January 2026
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