^{Image Credit: Shutterstock} 

^{By Amal Pushp, Affiliate Physicist at the Resonance Science Foundation} 

Fault tolerance is the ability of a system to continue operating during the advent of errors that lead to a fault in one or more components of the system. In a previous RSF article, I discussed quantum cat states and how they help in the realization of fault-tolerant quantum computers. In this article, we will look at another aspect that helps achieve somewhat a similar goal, i.e., making a quantum system less prone to errors. We’ll be talking about non-Abelian anyons or simply non-abelions that essentially advance this idea.  

Anyons are generally defined as quasiparticles existing in 2D systems, with properties distinct from both fermions and bosons, the two statistical classes of particles we know of based on quantum mechanics. They were first proposed and named by Nobel laureate Franck Wilczek who seemed to be unconvinced with the notion that there...