Emulating anyonic fractional statistical behavior in a superconducting quantum circuit

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the experimental emulation of anyonic fractional statistics in a superconducting quantum circuit by creating and braiding anyonic excitations, revealing the characteristic phase shift of  in a controlled setting.

Contribution

It presents the first experimental realization of anyonic behavior in a superconducting circuit using four qubits to emulate the toric code model and observe braiding statistics.

Findings

Observed  phase shift via Ramsey interference

Successfully generated four-qubit GHZ states

Demonstrated braiding of anyonic excitations

Abstract

Anyons are exotic quasiparticles obeying fractional statistics,whose behavior can be emulated in artificially designed spin systems.Here we present an experimental emulation of creating anyonic excitations in a superconducting circuit that consists of four qubits, achieved by dynamically generating the ground and excited states of the toric code model, i.e., four-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states. The anyonic braiding is implemented via single-qubit rotations: a phase shift of \pi related to braiding, the hallmark of Abelian 1/2 anyons, has been observed through a Ramsey-type interference measurement.