Interferometric Braiding of Anyons in Chern Insulators

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Ramsey interferometry protocol using impurities to directly measure the geometric phases of anyons in fractional Chern insulators, enabling topologically protected quantum operations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel impurity-based interferometry scheme for direct anyon braiding and phase measurement in Chern insulators, advancing topological quantum control methods.

Findings

The protocol can distinguish Aharonov-Bohm and exchange phases.

Finite-size simulations identify system sizes needed for accurate phase extraction.

The scheme is feasible for implementation in cold-atom and van der Waals heterostructures.

Abstract

Coherent control and braiding of anyons remain central challenges in realizing topologically protected quantum operations. We propose a Ramsey interferometry protocol to directly access the geometric phases associated with anyons in fractional Chern insulators. Our approach employs impurities with individually addressable internal states that bind to the anyons, allowing their adiabatic motion and exchange under full spatial control. By combining Ramsey and spin-echo sequences using one and two impurities, the protocol gives independent access to the Aharonov-Bohm and exchange contributions to the total geometric phase, thereby providing an unambiguous probe of anyonic statistics. Our scheme can potentially be implemented in cold-atom quantum simulators as well as in van der Waals heterostructures. Complementary finite-size simulations in non-interacting Chern insulators quantify the system sizes required to faithfully extract geometric phases, highlighting the role of edge effects. Our results establish impurity-based interferometry as a feasible route toward direct anyon braiding experiments in quantum simulators and lay the groundwork for future explorations of non-Abelian braiding and topological quantum control.