Physicists use light to pinpoint anyons for quantum computing research.

For nearly 100 years, physicists believed all electrical charges had the same magnitude, until the discovery of anyons, quasiparticles that fractionalize electron charges in two-dimensional systems. Luiz Santos, professor of physics at Emory University and senior author of the study, says, “Using a particular frequency of light, we’ve developed a sensor that can pinpoint the location of an anyon in a material.” Tianhong Lu, an Emory PhD candidate and first author of the Physical…