I found the news in Nature about this:
Quote:
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On page 829 of this issue, Dolev et al. report the detection of vortices in a fluid of electrons confined to two dimensions within a semiconductor structure that carry just 1/4 of the electron's charge. These 'quasiparticles' are an exciting find: according to theoretical predictions, their collective behaviour should be described by an unusual type of particle statistics known as non-abelian statistics. Above all, that could make them useful in an exotic, but highly promising, brand of quantum computer — the topological quantum computer (see News Feature on page 803).
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So, the interesting part is not the fact that these are quasi-particles with fractional electronic charge, but that the expected statistics of their collective behaviour is exotic.
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papageno
"Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous?" - Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes)
"It's all about context!" - Vince Noir (The Mighty Boosh)
"I've never heard of such a brutal and shocking injustice that I cared so little about!" - Zapp Brannigan (Futurama)
"...because the logic of the lines traced from reality is as poor of aesthetic value as it is strict in consistency. " - Paolo Bozzi (Naive Physics - free translation)
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