Researchers demonstrated that braiding and fusing particles known as non-Abelian anyons can perform every operation required by a quantum computer. A quantum computer becomes broadly useful only when it can perform any computation rather than a limited set of specialized tasks. Physicists have now demonstrated that unusual quantum objects called non-Abelian anyons can provide that [...]

Dr. Deng, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, received a Fields Medal for his work on an equation describing fluid mechanics.