The world and the Universe we live in are composed of fermions and bosons. The quantum statistics of these particles overwhelmingly governs what we see around us. But  one could wonder, can other kinds of quantum particles exist? I will begin this colloquium with an introduction of quantum statistics and the fascinating possible existence of anyons, particles which obey 'fractional' statistics.  

The quantum Hall system forms a marvelous two-dimensional realm for hosting many rich phenomena, including fractional statistics. I will describe how anyons can emerge in this setting, how they could be detected borrowing from beam-splitter and other principles used to detect bosons and fermions, and how landmark experiments of last year did perform such detection. I will also illustrate how the same setting can probe dynamics akin to that found in the astrophysical realm of black holes. Specifically, point-contact geometries can exhibit phenomena parallel to Hawking-Unruh radiation and black hole quasinormal modes associated with ringdowns in gravitational wave detection.  

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