Fusion and braiding of non-Abelian anyons unlock universal quantum computation on quantum hardware
A 54-qubit ground state of the S3 quantum double was prepared on a Quantinuum processor, encoding information in the global fusion space of non-Abelian anyons. By combining braiding with fusion, the researchers realize a universal topological gate set and read-out, demonstrated via creation of a magic state. This shows that S3 topological order is scalable and sufficient for universal quantum computation, offering a new pathway to compute with the intrinsic properties of quantum matter.