English

Non-abelian vortices and non-abelian statistics

High Energy Physics - Theory 2009-10-22 v1 Condensed Matter

Abstract

We study the interactions of non-abelian vortices in two spatial dimensions. These interactions have novel features, because the Aharonov-Bohm effect enables a pair of vortices to exchange quantum numbers. The cross section for vortex-vortex scattering is typically a multi-valued function of the scattering angle. There can be an exchange contribution to the vortex-vortex scattering amplitude that adds coherently with the direct amplitude, even if the two vortices have distinct quantum numbers. Thus two vortices can be ``indistinguishable'' even though they are not the same.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-th/9306006,
  title  = {Non-abelian vortices and non-abelian statistics},
  author = {Hoi-Kwong Lo and John Preskill},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-th/9306006},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

38 pages and 6 figures, REVTEX (version 2) and epsf.tex, CALT-68-1867