Overview

• The team introduced a mobile impurity into a strongly interacting ultracold bosonic gas confined to one dimension, triggering the emergence of anyonic quasiparticles.
• Momentum distribution analysis confirmed that the quasiparticles exhibit fractional exchange phases between zero and pi, distinguishing anyons from typical fermions and bosons.
• Researchers demonstrated continuous tuning of the statistical phase, enabling a smooth transition between bosonic and fermionic behavior in the same system.
• This groundbreaking work, featured in the May 28 issue of Nature, represents the first laboratory observation of one-dimensional anyons.
• The versatile experimental framework provides a new platform for studying exotic quantum states and could inform the design of topological quantum computers.