Statistics of fractionalized excitations through threshold spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how threshold spectroscopic measurements can reveal the anyonic statistics of fractionalized excitations in topologically ordered phases, providing a potential experimental detection method.

Contribution

It introduces a universal signature in threshold spectroscopy that depends on anyonic statistics, applicable to gapped quantum spin liquids and fractional Chern insulators.

Findings

Universal behavior of correlation functions near threshold depending on anyon statistics

Provides a theoretical basis for detecting anyonic statistics in experiments

Explains recent theoretical results in spin systems

Abstract

We show that the anyonic statistics of fractionalized excitations display characteristic signatures in threshold spectroscopic measurements. Drawing motivation from topologically ordered phases such as gapped quantum spin liquids and fractional chern insulators which possess fractionalized excitations, we consider gapped systems with abelian anyonic excitations. The low energy onset of associated correlation functions near the threshold show universal behaviour depending on the statistics of the anyons. This explains some recent theoretical results in spin systems and also provides a route towards detecting statistics in experiments such as neutron scattering and tunneling spectroscopy.