anyon

The quantum world is full of surprises: swap two electrons, and their combined wavefunction just changes sign; swap two photons, and nothing happens at all. But there are particles that behave very differently when exchanged, as if they remember being swapped. These particles are called anyons, and they can only exist in a two-dimensional world.

In the world of quantum particles, there are introverts — anyons. They are unlike familiar electrons or protons. If you swap two such introverts, they remember the maneuver, as if leaving an invisible trace.

The Josephson junction is a bridge made of superconductor, separated by an ultra-thin insulating layer. Current flows through it even without voltage. But when the current becomes too large, the bridge starts to oscillate, and even steps, Shapiro steps, appear on the voltage graph. Between these steps hide invisible gaps where the system behaves strangely.

A mosaic of squares and triangles covers the floor without gaps, yet it never settles into a simple repeating pattern. Such a pattern is a quasicrystal — a solid where atoms are arranged not periodically but according to a pattern of several waves of different lengths. These waves are incommensurate with each other, and together they create long-range order.

Two threads hang in space. One is looped around the other — physicists call this braiding. For a long time, it was thought that the rules of this dance were rigidly set by the number of dimensions. But the authors of the work found a new maneuver: a special kind of braiding that works in one dimension less than usual.

The hunt for non-Abelian anyons is a quest for a quantum ghost that leaves only one clue: entropy. These particles live in two-dimensional systems at ultralow temperatures. Their exchange doesn't just flip the sign of the wavefunction — it entangles states, creating topological order.

Textbooks divide particles into two camps: bosons love to crowd into the same state, fermions absolutely refuse. But nature allows a third option. Anyons are quasiparticles whose behavior lies somewhere in between. They can 'remember' how they were exchanged and obey a nonstandard exclusion principle.

The quantum world is full of transformations. Sometimes a system made of one type of particle starts behaving as if it harbors completely different ones. For example, in a chain of bosons, sociable particles that like to crowd into the same state, fermions from the Standard Model may unexpectedly appear, even though they usually keep to themselves.

A cloud of rubidium atoms falls into a trap made of light. Lasers and magnetic fields arrange it like a crystal lattice, but the cells here are not fractions of a millimeter: they are fractions of a micrometer.

A regular flashlight shines equally forward and backward. But in magnetic crystals, a axion appears — a ghostly excitation, like a wave going around a stadium: atoms pass a magnetic impulse to each other. When light meets an axion, a hybrid forms, whose fate depends on electric and magnetic fields.

A lump of dark matter drifts through the void — invisible, almost intangible. No one knows what it's made of, but a new study suggests viewing it as a drop of quantum liquid. Two kinds of fermion particles — call them "heavy" (ψ) and "light" (χ)—exchange signals via a third mediator particle (φ), like floats tied to a single line.

The end of the Universe is not just the fading of light. If dark energy, the mysterious substance accelerating cosmic expansion, tears it apart in a Big Rip scenario, or if expansion reverses into a contraction that pulls everything back to a point like a big bang in reverse, a…

Tile a floor with identical triangles, and you get a boring repeating pattern. But what if you want the pattern to never repeat, yet use just one tile? For a long time, mathematicians were sure it couldn't be done: you'd need at least two different shapes. The famous Penrose mosaic is a case in point: rhombi with acute and obtuse angles arrange into an infinitely varied but strictly ordered pattern.

The core of a neutron star can be likened to a taut string of super-nuclear density. Sound traveling along it is the oscillation of pressure, whose speed $$c_s$$ betrays the stiffness of matter. New research shows that this cosmic string does not hum monotonically.

A magnet with only one pole (north, without a south) is not a fragment but a particle in its own right. Physicists call it a magnetic monopole (a carrier of a single magnetic charge). Such visitors could have been born in the early universe, when the forces were just separating.

In the quantum world, there are rules that seem to be broken. One of them is the conservation law: if in classical physics symmetry guarantees the conservation of charge, then in the quantum description this guarantee can disappear. This phenomenon is called a quantum anomaly.

Light in semiconductors is born from pairs of charges, an electron and a hole, that attract each other like a magnet to a fridge. Such a pair is called an exciton. If you add one more charge to the pair, you get a trion — a trio of three particles.

A superconducting qubit is a tiny electrical circuit that behaves like an artificial atom. In its normal state, current flows through it without resistance, and the energy levels are evenly spaced, like steps on a staircase. But if a single electron gets stuck in the circuit, everything changes.

Imagine a tiled floor whose pattern never repeats, like the famous Penrose tiling. On this floor, magnetic arrows, the spins of electrons, perform a chaotic dance, giving rise to a quantum spin liquid.

Scientists have discovered that on a special triangular lattice, like a tightly woven carpet, particles freeze in place. They don't bump into neighbors or lose energy. Probability waves cancel out like opposing threads in a loom, locking the particle-knots tight.

Atoms, like strands in a braid, follow a strict rule: if one strand is 'charged', its neighbors must stay silent. This phenomenon, Rydberg blockade, allows stable quantum patterns to be woven. In such patterns, topological order emerges: a structure where the overall weaving pattern matters more than individual loops.

The Penrose tiling, assembled from two types of tiles, covers a plane without a repeating pattern — a mathematical marvel discovered by Roger Penrose that has found physical embodiment in the quantum world. Researchers modeled a chain of particles interacting according to a rule reminiscent of Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio.

All matter, from stars to humans, is built from particles that in the Standard Model are divided into two families. But there's a third, rare kind — particles that, when swapped, don't just exchange places but tie themselves into a knot, remembering the intertwining rather than the path.

Deep inside a superconductor, electrons pair up into Cooper pairs and glide without resistance. But if a vortex appears in this perfect order, a tiny region where superconductivity vanishes, special excitations emerge there: Bogoliubov quasiparticles.

A stretched string between two quarks doesn't pop instantly like a rubber band. It first vibrates, develops knots, and only then breaks, if it breaks at all. This isn't just a metaphor; it's an accurate description of what physicists call confinement: quarks are permanently locked inside hadrons, and the only way to separate them is to snap the flux tube that binds them.

Two actors on the same stage. One is a fermion, finicky and demanding, hard to make follow the rules of a quantum simulator. The other is a boson, easygoing and undemanding, ready to take any role. The director hopes the audience won't notice the substitution.