Talk:Anyon

Sub-optimal beginning?

This article now starts by saying that anyons are only possible in two spatial dimensions, ignoring that they are also possible in 1 spatial dimension (including for effective descriptions of edge excitations of quantum Hall systems). There is an extensive literature on this subject, and different approaches to anyons in 1 spatial dimension. This possibility is also described in references already cited in this Wikipedia article, including "Fröhlich, Jürg (1988)" under Non-abelian anyons. I would argue that this Wikipedia article should reflect this. It does not have to go into the details, but it should not explicitly exclude it. I find that misleading. I may be new to editing on Wikipedia, but inclusion, at least in this sense, I thought, was an important value. I tried to edit, as minimally as I could, but this change was reverted.

I would also argue that the current beginning is suboptimal in how it cites references. Why should there be a repeated reference to "Ornes, Stephen (2020)", which seems to me to be a newsletter in a magazine, when there are better references? I would propose a recent addition to the 2nd ed. of the Encyclopedia of Condensed Matter Physics by Leinaas and Myrheim ( https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-90800-9.00187-6 ), as it is part of a larger recent effort by many authors as described on https://www.sciencedirect.com/referencework/9780323914086/encyclopedia-of-condensed-matter-physics#book-description . I would think such a source is better than a newsletter in a magazine, but maybe I am in the minority. If my specific minimal text edit was not good enough, then I could agree that it could be written better, but the new suggested reference is, I argue, better than repeated references to a magazine, so I don't understand why that was reverted. In any case, perhaps my initial edit was not perfect, but I think it could be (part of) an improvement, which also preserved the source "Ornes, Stephen (2020)" which is used again at the end of the same paragraph. QuantumQuench (talk) 16:49, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

The article's lead section summarizes the most important material already in the article. Speculation about one-dimensional anyons has occurred, but it is not (yet) of central relevance to the article. Would you like to create a brief, informative section about one-dimensional anyon theories? You could then cite your encyclopedia article there if it is relevant. When citing sources behind a paywall so that most of our readers can't see them, I find it useful to include in the citation the relevant quote. I tried to improve the lead section to meet your other suggestions. HouseOfChange (talk) 18:30, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

As I hope was clear, my concern was that the article shouldn't say something false: In this case limiting the possibilities for anyons. Needlessly. That makes the article not useful. Your new version makes this issue less manifest, although I think some explanatory power was lost. However, I think it is wrong to brush off the 1d case as "speculation". As with your "obscurity" claims before, this comes across as derogatory. I checked the history and this Wikipedia article never called 2d anyons "speculations". It is not an experimental paper on anyons, nor should its uses or purpose be limited to a subgroup of ppl interested in learning about anyons. Main goal should be that it is useful, accurate, and encyclopedic; this implies comprehensive. That said, given that this article (currently) explains the 2d case, of course the focus should be on 2d in the lead. Another option for doing this is to limit the scope in the lead section, acknowledging the 1d case (which is not impossible as this article previously claimed), but then write so to convey what the article (at present) is about.

Since you previously jumped to accusing me of conflict of interest, of which I have none (and for which you in principle should apologize), let me just, for clarity, say that it's not "my" encyclopedia article. Maybe you didn't mean to imply this. It is "an" encyclopedia article, but which I would argue summarizes this topic and so can be useful, not only for 1d---that article is even primarily about 2d---nor only for the lead section. Its usefulness is also motivated based on the stated purpose of that entire encyclopedia. Again, it's not "my" encyclopedia. Unfortunately it's behind a paywall, but let's not apply double standards: that is also the case for other references in this Wikipedia article. Of course, having an open access version would be an advantage. QuantumQuench (talk) 11:40, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

This talk page exists to promote improvements to the article. I tried to improve it according to your useful suggestion. I also suggested that you create a section about one-dimensional anyons, using material from that encyclopedia article, to which I intended no disrespect. One relevant quote from it, IMO, would be "The two-dimensional case is most familiar, since it finds application to the fractional quantum Hall effect. The one-dimensional case is different, in that the particle statistics is expressed as a boundary condition on the wave function. We do not know of physical applications of the one-dimensional theory." HouseOfChange (talk) 15:29, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Particle Exchange

The article notes that:

"... when particle 1 and particle 2 are interchanged in a process where each of them makes a counterclockwise half-revolution about the other, the two-particle system returns to its original quantum wave function except multiplied by the complex unit-norm phase factor eiθ."

A rotation of each particle about the other by a half revolution does not exchange their positions. Is this meant to be a rotation of each particle about the center of the line joining them? (talk • --Luriol (talk) 22:04, 3 May 2023 (UTC)contribs) 21:04, 3 May 2023 (UTC)

Further reading section

The "Further reading" section has 3 scholarly reviews and a short popular piece from Quanta Magazine. Only one of these four items mentions Gerald Goldin: Nayak et al. say "This topological difference between two and three dimensions, first realized by Leinaas and Myrheim, 1977 and by Wilczek, 1982a, leads to a profound difference in the possible quantum mechanical properties, at least as a matter of principle, for quantum systems when particles are confined to 2 + 1 D (see also Goldin et al., 1981 and Wu, 1984)" Similarly, Khare's 1998 book on fractional statistics summed up the 1981 paper as "Few years later, Goldin, Menikoff and Sharp obtained the same results [as Leinaas and Myrheim] by an entirely different approach."

Per BRD, I reverted the recent addition of a 5th item to this short list, a 1991 article by Gerald Goldin, mostly behind a paywall except for its reference list: about 70 papers with 18 of those 70 having Gerald Goldin as first author. Goldin is not an impartial RS concerning the history of anyon research. HouseOfChange (talk) 03:52, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

LLM use?

This article reads awfully in its current state, there is no logical flow between sentences in places, it's clearly LLM and lacks citations for entire paragraphs sometimes making me feel like I can't trust it to not hallucinate. Some specific fragments that make me think it's LLM: "hints at a more subtle insight" "(The details are more involved than that, but this is the crucial point.)" "The relevant part here is that" Pionaiki (talk) 22:30, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for flagging this. That being said, the text you mentioned existed in the article as early as 2021, which predates most widely available chatbots, so it almost certainly isn't AI-generated. Gnomingstuff (talk) 00:27, 21 January 2026 (UTC)