Fusion of anyons

In much the same way that two fermions (e.g. both of spin 1/2) can be looked at
together as a composite boson (with total spin in a superposition of 0 and 1), two
or more anyons together make up a composite anyon (possibly a boson or fermion).
The composite anyon is said to be the result of the fusion of its components.

If N {\displaystyle N} N identical abelian anyons each with individual statistics α

{\displaystyle \alpha } \alpha (that is, the system picks up a phase e i α
{\displaystyle e^{i\alpha }} {\displaystyle e^{i\alpha }} when two individual
anyons undergo adiabatic counterclockwise exchange) all fuse together, they
together have statistics N 2 α {\displaystyle N^{2}\alpha } {\displaystyle
N^{2}\alpha }. This can be seen by noting that upon counterclockwise rotation of
two composite anyons about each other, there are N 2 {\displaystyle N^{2}} N^{2}
pairs of individual anyons (one in the first composite anyon, one in the second
composite anyon) that each contribute a phase e i α {\displaystyle e^{i\alpha }}
{\displaystyle e^{i\alpha }}. An analogous analysis applies to the fusion of non-
identical abelian anyons. The statistics of the composite anyon is uniquely
determined by the statistics of its components.

Non-abelian anyons have more complicated fusion relations. As a rule, in a system

with non-abelian anyons, there is a composite particle whose statistics label is
not uniquely determined by the statistics labels of its components, but rather
exists as a quantum superposition (this is completely analogous to how two fermions
known to have spin 1/2 are together in quantum superposition of total spin 1 and
0). If the overall statistics of the fusion of all of several anyons is known,
there is still ambiguity in the fusion of some subsets of those anyons, and each
possibility is a unique quantum state. These multiple states provide a Hilbert
space on which quantum computation can be done.[14]