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arXiv:2407.15939 · npj Quantum Information

Magic transition in measurement-only circuits

Poetri Sonya Tarabunga, Emanuele Tirrito

Published Oct 21, 2025• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Magic, also known as nonstabilizerness, quantifies the distance of a quantum state to the set of stabilizer states, and it serves as a necessary resource for potential quantum advantage over classical computing. In this work, we study magic in a measurement-only quantum circuit with competing types of Clifford and non-Clifford measurements, where magic is injected through the non-Clifford measurements. This circuit can be mapped to a classical model that can be simulated efficiently, and the magic can be characterized using any magic measure that is additive to the tensor product of single-qubit states. Leveraging this observation, we study the magic transition in this circuit in both one- and two-dimensional lattices using large-scale numerical simulations. Our results demonstrate the presence of a magic transition between two different phases with extensive magic scaling, separated by a critical point in which the mutual magic exhibits scaling behavior analogous to entanglement. We further show that these two distinct phases can be distinguished by topological magic. In a different regime, with a vanishing rate of non-Clifford measurements, we find that the magic saturates in both phases. Our work sheds light on the behavior of magic and its linear combinations in quantum circuits, employing genuine magic measures.

DOI
10.1038/s41534-025-01104-y

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Abstract Magic, also known as nonstabilizerness, quantifies the distance of a quantum state to the set of stabilizer states, and it serves as a necessary resource for potential quantum advantage over classical computing. In this work, we study magic in a measurement-only quantum circuit with competing types of Clifford and non-Clifford measurements, where magic is injected through the non-Clifford measurements. This circuit can be mapped to a classical model that can be simulated efficiently, and the magic can be characterized using any magic measure that is additive to the tensor product of single-qubit states. Leveraging this observation, we study the magic transition in this circuit in both one- and two-dimensional lattices using large-scale numerical simulations. Our results demonstrate the presence of a magic transition between two different phases with extensive magic scaling, separated by a critical point in which the mutual magic exhibits scaling behavior analogous to entanglement. We further show that these two distinct phases can be distinguished by topological magic. In a different regime, with a vanishing rate of non-Clifford measurements, we find that the magic saturates in both phases. Our work sheds light on the behavior of magic and its linear combinations in quantum circuits, employing genuine magic measures.
Nonstabilizerness describes the distance of a quantum state to its closest stabilizer state. It is—like entanglement—a necessary resource for a quantum advantage over classical computing. We study nonstabilizerness, quantified by stabilizer entropy, in a hybrid quantum circuit with projective measurements and a controlled injection of non-Clifford resources. We discover a phase transition between a power law and constant scaling of nonstabilizerness with system size controlled by the rate of measurements. The same circuit also exhibits a phase transition in entanglement that appears, however, at a different critical measurement rate. This mechanism shows how, from the viewpoint of a quantum advantage, hybrid circuits can host multiple distinct transitions where not only entanglement, but also other nonlinear properties of the density matrix come into play. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Nonstabilizerness, or quantum magic resource, presents a valuable resource in quantum error correction and computation. We study the dynamics of locally injected nonstabilizerness in unitary Clifford circuits, where the total nonstabilizerness is conserved. However, the absence of physical observables quantifying nonstabilizerness precludes a direct microscopic or hydrodynamic description of its local distribution and dynamics. Using insights from stabilizer quantum error correcting codes, we rigorously show that the spatial distribution of nonstabilizerness can be inferred from a canonical representation of low-magic states, dubbed the bipartite magic gauge. Moreover, we propose two operationally relevant magic length scales. We numerically establish that, at early times, both length scales grow ballistically at distinct velocities set by the entanglement velocity, after which nonstabilizerness delocalizes. Our work sheds light on the spatiotemporal structure of quantum resources and complexity in many-body dynamics, opening up avenues for investigating their transport properties and further connections with quantum error correction.
The classical simulation of highly entangling quantum dynamics is conjectured to be generically hard. Thus, recently discovered measurement-induced transitions between highly entangling and low-entanglement dynamics are phase transitions in classical simulability. Here, we study simulability transitions beyond entanglement: noting that some highly entangling dynamics (e.g., integrable systems or Clifford circuits) are easy to classically simulate, thus requiring “magic”—a subtle form of quantum resource—to achieve computational hardness, we ask how the dynamics of magic competes with measurements. We study the resulting “dynamical magic transitions” focusing on random monitored Clifford circuits doped by T gates (injecting magic). We identify dynamical “stabilizer purification”—the collapse of a superposition of stabilizer states by measurements—as the mechanism driving this transition. We find cases where transitions in magic and entanglement coincide, but also others with a magic and simulability transition in a highly (volume-law) entangled phase. In establishing our results, we use Pauli-based computation, a scheme distilling the quantum essence of the dynamics to a magic state register subject to mutually commuting measurements. We link stabilizer purification to “magic fragmentation” wherein these measurements separate into disjoint, O ( 1 ) -weight blocks, and relate this to the spread of magic in the original circuit becoming arrested. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
Tensor network methods leverage the limited entanglement of quantum states to efficiently simulate many-body systems. Alternatively, Clifford circuits provide a framework for handling highly entangled stabilizer states, which have low magic and are thus also classically tractable. Clifford tensor networks combine the benefits of both approaches, exploiting Clifford circuits to reduce the classical complexity of the tensor network description of states, with promising effects on simulation approaches. We study the disentangling power of Clifford transformations acting on tensor networks, with a particular emphasis on entanglement cooling strategies. We identify regimes where exact or heuristic Clifford disentanglers are effective, explain the link between the two approaches, and characterize their breakdown as non-Clifford resources accumulate. Additionally, we prove that, beyond stabilizer settings, no Clifford operation can universally disentangle even a single qubit from an arbitrary non-Clifford rotation. Our results clarify both the capabilities and fundamental limitations of Clifford-based simulation methods.
Nonstabilizerness or magic resource characterizes the amount of non-Clifford operations needed to prepare quantum states.It is a crucial resource for quantum computing and a necessary condition for quantum advantage.However, quantifying magic resource beyond a few qubits has been a major challenge.Here, we introduce efficient measures of magic resource for pure quantum states with a sampling cost that is independent of the number of qubits.Our method uses Bell measurements over two copies of a state, which we implement in experiment together with a cost-free error-mitigation scheme.We show the transition of classically simulable stabilizer states into intractable quantum states on the IonQ quantum computer.For applications, we efficiently distinguish stabilizer and nonstabilizer states with low measurement cost even in the presence of experimental noise.Further, we propose a variational quantum algorithm to maximize our measure via the shift rule.Our algorithm can be free of barren plateaus even for highly expressible variational circuits.Finally, we experimentally demonstrate a Bell-measurement protocol for the stabilizer Rényi entropy as well as the Wallach-Meyer entanglement measure.Our results pave the way to understanding the nonclassical power of quantum computers, quantum simulators, and quantum many-body systems.
Topological matter provides natural platforms for robust, non-local information storage, central to quantum error correction. Yet, while the relation between entanglement and topology is well established, little is known about the role of nonstabilizerness (or magic), a pivotal concept in fault-tolerant quantum computation, in topological phases. We introduce the concept of topological magic response, the ability of a state to spread over stabilizer space when perturbed by finite-depth non-Clifford circuits. Unlike a topological invariant or order parameter, this response function probes how a phase reacts to non-Clifford perturbations, revealing the presence of non-local quantum correlations. In Ising-type spin chains, we show that symmetry-broken and paramagnetic phases lack such a response, whereas symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases always display it. To capture this, we utilize a combination of stabilizer Rényi entropies that, in analogy with topological entanglement entropy, isolates non-locally stored information. Using exact analytic computations and matrix product states simulations based on an algorithmic technique we introduce, we show that SPT phases doped with TTT gates support robust topological magic response, while trivial phases remain featureless.