'Paraparticles' Would Be a Third Kingdom of Quantum Particle
8 comments
·April 12, 2025programjames
whatshisface
The r-tensors are a representation of the symmetric group, and this is stated right after eqn. 4.
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munchler
> If paraparticles exist, they’ll most likely be emergent particles, called quasiparticles
So are these just a new flavor of quasiparticle, like an electron “hole”, or are they possibly real particles? The article seems contradictory.
jfengel
They can definitely arise as quasi particles.
It's not impossible that there could also be fundamental particles with this property. It would require some new symmetry to be found, for which there is currently no evidence, but it might be found be reconsidering existing data.
whatshisface
Right now they are neither a real particle or quasiparticle. They are a hole in a "theorem" that was previously thought to close off our imagination to new basic categories of particles.
whatshisface
Something this simple has to be real.
wizardforhire
Convergence strikes again!
It’ll be super interesting to follow the developments with this one.
Here's a link to the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08262-7
I really wish they tied this into representation theory, because it looks like the R-tensors are similar to representations of the permutation group, but I don't see exactly how to write them in terms of representations.