Quantum walk of two anyons across a statistical boundary

TL;DR

This paper investigates how two-anyon quantum walks are affected by a statistical boundary in a 1D lattice, revealing novel interference effects, wave reflections, and trapping phenomena that depend on exchange statistics.

Contribution

It introduces a model of two-anyon quantum walks across a statistical boundary, demonstrating how exchange statistics influence wave dynamics and interference patterns.

Findings

Bunched waves reflect or split at the boundary depending on phases.

Strong asymmetries in two-particle interference caused by the boundary.

Bunched waves can be trapped or fragmented between two domain walls.

Abstract

We model a quantum walk of identical particles that can change their exchange statistics by hopping across a domain wall in a 1D lattice. Such a "statistical boundary" is transparent to single particles and affects the dynamics only by swapping multiple particles arriving together. We find that the two-particle interference is dramatically altered by reflections of these bunched waves at the interface, producing strong measurable asymmetries. Depending on the phases on the two sides, a bunched wavepacket can get completely reflected or split into a superposition of a reflected wave and an antibunched wave. This leads to striking dynamics with two domain walls, where bunched waves can get trapped in between or fragment into multiple correlated single-particle wavepackets. These findings can be realized with density-dependent hopping in present-day atomic setups and open up a new paradigm of intrinsically many-body phenomena at statistical boundaries.