How to simulate magic state cultivation with around $8$ Clifford terms on average

Kwok Ho Wan, Zhenghao Zhong (Sep 11 2025).

Abstract: Building upon [arXiv:2509.01224], we present a sketch on how to simulate the non-Clifford $d=5$ magic state cultivation circuits [arXiv:2409.17595] with a sum of $\approx 8$ Clifford ZX-diagrams on average, at $0.1\%$ noise. Compared to a magic cat state stabiliser decomposition of all $53$ non-Clifford spiders ($6{,}377{,}292$ terms required), this is more than $7 \times 10^{5}$ times reduction in the number of terms. Our stabiliser decomposition has the advantage of representing the final non-Clifford state (in light of circuit errors) as a sum of Clifford ZX-diagrams. This will be useful in simulating the escape stage of magic state cultivation, where one need to port the resultant state of cultivation into a larger Clifford circuit with many more qubits. Still, it's necessary to only track $\approx 8$ Clifford terms. Our result sheds light on the simulability of operationally relevant, high $T$-count quantum circuits with some internal structure.

Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08658