English

Non-Abelian statistics versus the Witten anomaly

High Energy Physics - Theory 2012-10-03 v2 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Quantum Physics

Abstract

This paper is motivated by prospects for non-Abelian statistics of deconfined particle-like objects in 3+1 dimensions, realized as solitons with localized Majorana zeromodes. To this end, we study the fermionic collective coordinates of magnetic monopoles in 3+1 dimensional spontaneously-broken SU(2) gauge theories with various spectra of fermions. We argue that a single Majorana zeromode of the monopole is not compatible with cancellation of the Witten SU(2) anomaly. We also compare this approach with other attempts to realize deconfined non-Abelian objects in 3+1 dimensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1106.0004,
  title  = {Non-Abelian statistics versus the Witten anomaly},
  author = {John McGreevy and Brian Swingle},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1106.0004},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

11 pages, 3 figures; v2: added refs, minor corrections, published version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:15:36.175Z