Signal Quantum computing's "dark horse" just proved it can go universal

Summary

Researchers from the University of Chicago, Harvard, Stony Brook University and Quantinuum showed that non-Abelian anyons can perform the full range of operations needed for universal quantum computing. The work, published in Nature, used 54 qubits on Quantinuum's H2 trapped-ion processor and built anyons from the S3 symmetry group. Combining braiding with fusion gave a universal gate set that braiding alone could not provide. The team also demonstrated topological qutrits that hold three quantum information levels instead of two. Quantinuum's Henrik Dreyer called non-Abelian codes a dark horse in the race to error correction that avoid magic state distillation. The next step is to integrate active error correction, and UChicago's Ruben Verresen is already developing stabilization techniques for non-Abelian quantum memories.