Observing anyonization of bosons in a quantum gas

Anyons^1,2 are low-dimensional quasiparticles that obey fractional statistics, hence interpolating between bosons and fermions. In two dimensions, they exist as elementary excitations of fractional quantum Hall states^3-5 and are believed to enable topological quantum computing^6,7. One-dimensional anyons have been theoretically proposed, but their experimental realization has proven to be difficult. Here we observed emergent anyonic correlations in a one-dimensional strongly interacting quantum gas, resulting from the phenomenon of spin-charge separation^8-10. A mobile impurity provides the necessary spin degree of freedom to engineer anyonic correlations in the charge sector and simultaneously acts as a probe to reveal these correlations. Starting with bosons, we tune the statistical phase to transmute bosons through anyons to fermions and observe an asymmetric momentum distribution^11-14, a hallmark of anyonic correlations. Going beyond equilibrium conditions, we observed dynamical fermionization of the anyons¹⁵. This study opens the door to the exploration of non-equilibrium anyonic phenomena in a highly controllable setting^15-17.