Citation: Kitaev, A. Yu. "Quantum measurements and the Abelian stabilizer problem." arXiv preprint quant-ph/9511026 (1995).
Web: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9511026
Tags: Computer-scientific
This is the paper in which Kitaev derives an algorithm for the "Abelian stabilizer problem", which encompasses factoring/discrete-log which Shor had already done. The story goes that Kitaev wasn't able to get his hands on a copy of Shor's results so he came up with this in his pursuit of trying to guess what Shor did.
The bulk of this paper is spent talking about generalities related to quantum computation. There are lots of musings about different aspects which have now become commonplace.
The part of the paper containing the actual algorithm is rather short. While certainly a good piece of work, it is not very relevant to understanding topological quantum computation.