Secret communication games and a hierarchy of quasiparticle statistics in 3 + 1D topological phases

Abstract

We show that a family of secret communication challenge games naturally define a hierarchy of emergent quasiparticle statistics in three-dimensional (3D) topological phases. The winning strategies exploit a special class of the recently proposed $R$-paraparticles to allow nonlocal secret communication between the two participating players. We first give a high-level, axiomatic description of emergent $R$-paraparticles, and show that any physical system hosting such particles admits a winning strategy. We then analyze the games using the categorical description of topological phases (where point-like excitations in 3D are described by symmetric fusion categories), and show that only $R$-paraparticles can win the 3D challenge in a noise-robust way, and the winning strategy is essentially unique. This analysis associates emergent $R$-paraparticles to deconfined gauge theories based on an exotic class of finite groups. Thus, even though this special class of $R$-paraparticles are fermions or bosons under the categorical classification, their exchange statistics can still have nontrivial physical consequences in the presence of appropriate defects, and the $R$-paraparticle language offers a more convenient description of the winning strategies. Finally, while a subclass of non-Abelian anyons can win the game in 2D, we introduce twisted variants that exclude anyons, thereby singling out $R$-paraparticles in 2D as well. Our results establish the secret communication challenge as a versatile diagnostic for both identifying and classifying exotic exchange statistics in topological quantum matter.