"Bosons are sociable. They happily pile into the same quantum state, that is, the same combination of quantum properties such as energy level, like photons do when they form a laser. Fermions, by contrast, are the introverts of the particle world. They flat out refuse to share a quantum state with one another. This reclusive behaviour is what forces electrons to arrange themselves in layered atomic shells, ultimately giving rise to the structure of the periodic table and the rich chemistry it enables."
"Although none of the elementary particles that physicists have detected are anyons, it is possible to engineer environments that give rise to them and potentially harness their power. We now think that some anyons wind around one another, weaving paths that store information in a way that's unusually hard to disturb. That makes them promising candidates for building quantum computers - machines that could revolutionise fields like drug discovery, materials science, and cryptography."
Bosons and fermions represent two fundamental categories of elementary particles with contrasting quantum behaviors: bosons can occupy identical quantum states while fermions obey the exclusion principle, producing atomic electron shells and the periodic table. A third category, anyons, can arise in engineered environments and exhibit exchange statistics that differ from bosons and fermions. Some anyons braid around one another, with those braiding paths encoding information in ways that resist local disturbances. Braided anyons therefore present a route to intrinsically protected, fault-tolerant quantum computation with potential applications in drug discovery, materials science, and cryptography.
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