Theoretical physicists have proposed the existence of a new type of particle that doesn’t fit into the conventional classifications of fermions and bosons. Their ‘paraparticle’, described in Nature on January 8, is not the first to be suggested, but the detailed mathematical model characterizing it could lead to experiments in which it is created using a quantum computer. The research also suggests that undiscovered elementary paraparticles might exist in nature.
In a separate development published late last year in Science, physicists experimentally demonstrated another kind of particle that is neither a boson nor a fermion — an ‘anyon’ — in a virtual one-dimensional universe for the first time. Anyons had previously been created only in 2D systems.
Because of their unusual behaviour, both paraparticles and anyons could one day play a part in making quantum computers less error-prone.
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