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arXiv:2407.18394 · npj Quantum Information

Identifying quantum resources in encoded computations

Jack Davis, Nicolas Fabre, Ulysse Chabaud

Published May 29, 2026• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Characterizing the origin of quantum computational advantage amounts to identifying the key properties, or quantum resources, that distinguish quantum computers from their classical counterparts. Fault-tolerant computation, however, requires error-correcting codes to encode logical information into a larger, physical quantum system. This makes the task of resource identification more difficult, as what constitutes a resource from the logical and physical points of view can differ significantly. Here, we introduce a framework to correctly identify quantum resources in general encoded computations. For a given quantum code, our construction provides a Wigner function that accounts for how the symmetry of the code space is contained within the symmetry of the physical space, resulting in an object capable of describing the logical content of any physical state, both within and outside the code space. We illustrate our general construction with the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill encoding of qudits with odd dimension. The resulting Wigner function, which we call the Zak–Gross Wigner function, is shown to correctly identify quantum resources through its phase-space negativity. For instance, it is positive for encoded stabilizer states and negative for the bosonic vacuum. We further show that its negativity provides a measure of magic for the logical content of a state and that its marginals are modular measurement distributions associated with conjugate Zak patches.

DOI
10.1038/s41534-026-01263-6

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Characterizing the origin of quantum computational advantage amounts to identifying the key properties, or quantum resources, that distinguish quantum computers from their classical counterparts. Fault-tolerant computation, however, requires error-correcting codes to encode logical information into a larger, physical quantum system. This makes the task of resource identification more difficult, as what constitutes a resource from the logical and physical points of view can differ significantly. Here, we introduce a framework to correctly identify quantum resources in general encoded computations. For a given quantum code, our construction provides a Wigner function that accounts for how the symmetry of the code space is contained within the symmetry of the physical space, resulting in an object capable of describing the logical content of any physical state, both within and outside the code space. We illustrate our general construction with the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill encoding of qudits with odd dimension. The resulting Wigner function, which we call the Zak–Gross Wigner function, is shown to correctly identify quantum resources through its phase-space negativity. For instance, it is positive for encoded stabilizer states and negative for the bosonic vacuum. We further show that its negativity provides a measure of magic for the logical content of a state and that its marginals are modular measurement distributions associated with conjugate Zak patches.
Quantum resource theories are a powerful framework for characterizing and quantifying relevant quantum phenomena and identifying processes that optimize their use for different tasks. Here, we define a resource measure for magic, the sought-after property in most fault-tolerant quantum computers. In contrast to previous literature, our formulation is based on bosonic codes, well-studied tools in continuous-variable quantum computation. Particularly, we use the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill code to represent multiqubit states and consider the resource theory for the Wigner negativity. Our techniques are useful in finding resource lower bounds for different applications as state conversion and gate synthesis. The analytical expression of our magic measure allows us to extend current analysis limited to small dimensions, easily addressing systems of up to 12 qubits.
Discriminating between quantum computing architectures that can provide quantum advantage from those that cannot is of crucial importance.From the fundamental point of view, establishing such a boundary is akin to pinpointing the resources for quantum advantage; from the technological point of view, it is essential for the design of nontrivial quantum computing architectures.Wigner negativity is known to be a necessary resource for computational advantage in several quantum-computing architectures, including those based on continuous variables (CVs).However, it is not a sufficient resource, and it is an open question under which conditions CV circuits displaying Wigner negativity offer the potential for quantum advantage.In this work we identify vast families of circuits that display large, possibly unbounded, Wigner negativity, and yet are classically efficiently simulatable, although they are not recognized as such by previously available theorems.These families of circuits employ bosonic codes based on either translational or rotational symmetries (e.g., Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill or cat codes) and can include both Gaussian and non-Gaussian gates and measurements.Crucially, within these encodings, the computational basis states are described by intrinsically negative Wigner functions, even though they are stabilizer states if considered as codewords belonging to a finite-dimensional Hilbert space.We derive our results by establishing a link between the simulatability of high-dimensional discrete-variable quantum circuits and bosonic codes.
Abstract In this work, we study the Wigner phase-space representation of qubit states encoded in continuous variables (CV) by using the Gottesman–Kitaev–Preskill (GKP) mapping. We explore a possible connection between resources for universal quantum computation in discrete-variable (DV) systems, i.e. non-stabilizer states, and negativity of the Wigner function in CV architectures, which is a necessary requirement for quantum advantage. In particular, we show that the lowest Wigner logarithmic negativity corresponds to encoded stabilizer states, while the maximum negativity is associated with the most non-stabilizer states, H-type and T-type quantum states.
An important problem in quantum computation is to characterize the resources required for a computational speedup over classical computation. Veitch et al. showed that one necessary condition for a computational speedup in the model of quantum computation with magic states is that the discrete Wigner function representing the input state of the quantum circuit must take negative values. The amount of negativity in the discrete Wigner function quantifies the complexity of classical simulation of a quantum computation with simulation being efficient if the Wigner function is nonnegative everywhere. In this sense, negativity of the Wigner quasiprobability representation serves as an indicator of quantumness from a computational perspective. However, this result only holds for systems of qudits where the local Hilbert space dimension is odd. The first main result discussed in this thesis relates to a discrete Wigner function suitable for describing quantum computation with magic states defined for any local Hilbert space dimension. When the local Hilbert space dimension is odd it subsumes the standard discrete Wigner function. When the local Hilbert space dimension is even, as a result of state-independent proofs of contextuality among multiqubit (or multi-even-dimensional-qudit) Pauli observables, the phase space over which the Wigner function is defined becomes much larger. However, for systems of qubits, the properties required for simulation of quantum computation with magic states remain. This simulation method effectively extends the result described above for odd-dimensional qudits to qubits. Although in the even-dimensional case the phase space is much larger, points in multiqubit phase space can be characterized and classified and some structure can be imparted on the phase space. The second main result discussed here is a hidden variable model for quantum computation with magic states on qubits. This model is similar in structure to quasiprobability representations like the discrete Wigner function, but unlike those representations the model is capable of representing all elements of any quantum computation---states, operations, and measurements---using only classical probabilities. No negativity is required. This calls into question the role of negativity in quasiprobability representations as an indicator of quantumness for models of quantum computation.
Phase-space representations can be used to reveal resources for quantum computational advantage. In odd-dimensional qudit systems, states and operations admitting non-negative quasi-probability representations are efficiently classically simulable, and analogous conclusions hold for bosonic systems, usually represented in quadrature phase space. However, when quantum information is encoded in bosonic systems, the link between physical phase-space representations and computational resources becomes nontrivial: large negativities may arise in the physical space even when the encoded model remains efficiently simulable. We establish a general framework connecting physical phase spaces of bosonic systems to the effective computational phase spaces associated with arbitrary encodings. We show that bosonic Hilbert spaces with finitely many modes can always be exactly encoded on a quantum computer, without truncation or approximations, and that for any encoding there exists an adapted physical phase-space representation in which all provably classically simulable states and protocols are non-negative. Conversely, negativity can always persist in physical representations for arbitrary encodings. Our results formalize the operational meaning of phase-space negativity in bosonic quantum information and its relation with computational resources.
Although the similarity between nonstabilizer states—also known as magic states—in discrete-variable systems and non-Gaussian states in continuous-variable systems has widely been recognized, the precise connections between these two notions have still been unclear. We establish a fundamental link between these two quantum resources via the Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) encoding. We show that the negativity of the continuous-variable Wigner function for an encoded GKP state coincides with a magic measure we introduce, which matches the negativity of the discrete Wigner function for odd dimensions. We also provide a continuous-variable representation of the stabilizer Rényi entropy—a recent proposal for a magic measure for multiqubit states. We further provide the magic measure with an operational interpretation as a runtime of a classical simulation algorithm. In addition, we employ our results to prove that implementing a multiqubit logical non-Clifford operation in the GKP code subspace requires a non-Gaussian operation even at the limit of perfect encoding, despite the fact that the ideal GKP states already come with a large amount of non-Gaussianity.