Partitioning of Diluted Anyons Reveals their Braiding Statistics

Abstract: Correlations of partitioned particles carry essential information about their quantumness. Partitioning full beams of charged particles leads to current fluctuations, with their autocorrelation (namely, shot noise) revealing the particle' charge. This is not the case when the partitioned particle beams are diluted. Bosons or fermions will exhibit particles antibunching (due to their sparsity and discreteness). However, when diluted anyons, such as the quasiparticles in fractional quantum Hall states, are partitioned in a narrow constriction, their autocorrelation reveals an essential aspect of their exchange statistics: their braiding phase. Here, we describe detailed measurements of weak partitioned, highly diluted, one-dimension-like edge modes of the one-third filling fractional quantum Hall state. The measured autocorrelation agrees with our theory of braiding anyons in the time-domain (instead of braiding in space); with a braiding phase 2$\theta$=2$\pi$/3, without any fitting parameters. Our work offers a relatively straightforward and simple method to observe the braiding statistics of other exotic anyonic states, such as non-abelian states, without resorting to complex interference experiments.