Observing anyonization of bosons in a quantum gas

Anyons ^1,2 are low-dimensional quasiparticles that obey fractional statistics, hence interpolating between bosons and fermions. In two dimensions, they exist as elementary excitations of fractional quantum Hall states ^3–5 and are believed to enable topological quantum computing ^6,7 . One-dimensional anyons have been theoretically proposed, but their experimental realization has proven to be difficult. Here we observed emergent anyonic correlations in a one-dimensional strongly interacting quantum gas, resulting from the phenomenon of spin–charge separation ^8–10 . A mobile impurity provides the necessary spin degree of freedom to engineer anyonic correlations in the charge sector and simultaneously acts as a probe to reveal these correlations. Starting with bosons, we tune the statistical phase to transmute bosons through anyons to fermions and observe an asymmetric momentum distribution ^11–14 , a hallmark of anyonic correlations. Going beyond equilibrium conditions, we observed dynamical fermionization of the anyons ¹⁵ . This study opens the door to the exploration of non-equilibrium anyonic phenomena in a highly controllable setting ^15–17 .