Abstract
The Yang-Baxter equation and it's various forms have applications in many fields, including statistical mechanics, knot theory, and quantum information. Unitary solutions of the braided Yang-Baxter equation are of particular interest as quantum gates for topological quantum computers. We demonstrate a simple construction for solutions in any dimension, which are both unitary and universal for quantum computation. We also fully classify a family of solutions to certain generalized Yang-Baxter equations and prove that certain instances of the equation only have solutions that are scalar multiples of the identity.