Magic refers to the degree of “quantumness” in a system that cannot be fully described by stabilizer states and Clifford operations alone. In quantum computing, stabilizer states and Clifford operations can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer, even though they may appear complicated from the perspective of entanglement. In this sense, magic is a crucial resource for unlocking the unique computational power of quantum computers to address problems that are classically intractable. Magic can be quantified by measures such as Wigner negativity and mana that satisfy fundamental properties such as monotonicity under Clifford operations. In this paper, we generalize the statistical mechanical mapping methods of large- q random circuits to the calculation of Rényi Wigner negativity and mana. Based on this, we find: (1) a precise formula describing the competition between magic and entanglement in many-body states prepared under Haar random circuits; (2) a formula describing the spreading and scrambling of magic in states evolved under random Clifford circuits; (3) a quantitative description of magic “squeezing” and “teleportation” under measurements. Finally, we comment on the relation between coherent information and magic.
Magic refers to the degree of “quantumness” in a system that cannot be fully described by stabilizer states and Clifford operations alone. In quantum computing, stabilizer states and Clifford operations can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer, even though they may appear complicated from the perspective of entanglement. In this sense, magic is a crucial resource for unlocking the unique computational power of quantum computers to address problems that are classically intractable. Magic can be quantified by measures such as Wigner negativity and mana that satisfy fundamental properties such as monotonicity under Clifford operations. In this paper, we generalize the statistical mechanical mapping methods of large- q random circuits to the calculation of Rényi Wigner negativity and mana. Based on this, we find: (1) a precise formula describing the competition between magic and entanglement in many-body states prepared under Haar random circuits; (2) a formula describing the spreading and scrambling of magic in states evolved under random Clifford circuits; (3) a quantitative description of magic “squeezing” and “teleportation” under measurements. Finally, we comment on the relation between coherent information and magic.
The quantum-trajectory description of a noisy quantum circuit is not unique: every Kraus representation of the noise channel defines a different unraveling, i.e., a different ensemble of pure states that averages to the same density matrix. While all unravelings share the same expectation values of observables, they generally differ in the amount of quantum resources carried by the individual trajectories. Here we study non-stabilizerness, or magic, quantified by the stabilizer Rényi entropy, in quantum-trajectory unravelings of Haar-random and T-doped random Clifford brickwork circuits subject to local dephasing noise of strength p. The canonical unraveling in terms of Pauli jumps is Clifford and leaves magic untouched, so that trajectories retain the Haar-random value of non-stabilizerness. Exploring the full two-parameter family of minimal unravelings, we find that the trajectory-averaged magic can be substantially reduced by a state-independent choice of Kraus operators, and that the optimal choice is not in general the projective-measurement unraveling, but a two-outcome generalized measurement in which the Kraus operators correspond to a weak measurement of the noisy qubit. The optimal unraveling reduces the extensive magic density of the trajectories by a p-dependent factor without altering its linear scaling with system size. At the same time, it produces a very broad distribution of magic over trajectories, with a sizable fraction of trajectories retaining Haar-random magic. Since the cost of stabilizer-based classical simulation grows exponentially with the magic of the state, these high-magic trajectories, rather than the average, control the simulation cost. Our results delineate the potential and the limitations of unraveling optimization as a route to the classical simulation of noisy quantum dynamics with stabilizer methods.
Magic is the resource that quantifies the amount of beyond-Clifford operations necessary for universal quantum computing. It bounds the cost of classically simulating quantum systems via stabilizer circuits central to quantum error correction and computation. In this paper, we investigate how fast generic many-body dynamics generate magic resources under the constraints of locality and unitarity, focusing on magic spreading in brick-wall random unitary circuits. We explore scalable magic measures intimately connected to the algebraic structure of the Clifford group. These metrics enable the investigation of the spreading of magic for system sizes of up to N = 1024 qudits, surpassing the previous state-of-the-art, which was restricted to about a dozen qudits. We demonstrate that magic resources equilibrate on timescales logarithmic in the system size, akin to anti-concentration and Hilbert space delocalization phenomena, but qualitatively different from the spreading of entanglement entropy. As random circuits are minimal models for chaotic dynamics, we conjecture that our findings describe the phenomenology of magic resources growth in a broad class of chaotic many-body systems.
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
Magic (non-stabilizerness) is a key resource for achieving universal fault-tolerant quantum computation beyond classical computation. While previous studies have primarily focused on magic in single systems, its interactions and distribution in multipartite settings remain largely unexplored. In this work, we introduce mutual mana as a measure of magic correlations defined in close analogy with quantum mutual information. Our definition builds upon mana, which is the established quantifier of magic based on discrete Wigner function negativity. We characterize magic correlations generated by discrete beamsplitters, whose Gaussian counterparts are fundamental components in quantum optics and quantum technologies. We show that coupling a magic state with a stabilizer vacuum state via a discrete beamsplitter will induce a full conversion of local magic into mutual mana, thereby establishing a mechanism for redistributing magic resources as magic correlations. We reveal the fundamental properties of mutual mana and derive its explicit expressions for several prototypical qutrit states subject to a discrete beamsplitter. We make a comparative study of mutual mana with several established quantifiers of correlations generated by the qutrit beamsplitter, including quantum mutual information, mutual L1-norm magic, and mutual stabilizer 2-Rényi entropy.
There is a property of a quantum state called ``magic.'' As shown by the Gottesman-Knill theorem, so-called stabilizer states, which are composed of only Clifford gates, can be efficiently computed on a classical computer, and thus quantum computation gives no advantage. Nonstabilizer states are called magic states, which are necessary to achieve the universal quantum computation. Magic (monotone) is the measure of the amount of nonstabilizer resource, and it measures how difficult it is for a classical computer to simulate the state. We study magic of states in the integrable and chaotic regimes of the higher-spin generalization of the Ising model through two quantities: ``mana'' and ``robustness of magic'' (RoM). We find that in the chaotic regime, mana increases monotonically in time in the early-time region, and at late times these quantities oscillate around some nonzero value that increases linearly with respect to the system size. Our result also suggests that under chaotic dynamics, any state evolves to a state whose mana almost saturates the optimal upper bound; i.e., the state becomes ``maximally magical.'' We find that RoM also shows similar behaviors. On the other hand, in the integrable regime, mana and RoM behave periodically in time in contrast to the chaotic case. In addition to mana and RoM, for the early-time behavior of magic, we study the stabilizer R\'enyi entropy, which can be numerically computed for larger systems than mana and RoM. In the anti-de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence, classical spacetime emerges from the chaotic nature of the dual quantum system. Our results suggest that magic of quantum states is strongly involved in the emergence of spacetime geometry.
Abstract Magic states are key ingredients in schemes to realize universal fault-tolerant quantum computation. Theories of magic states attempt to quantify this computational element via monotones and determine how these states may be efficiently transformed into useful forms. Here, we develop a statistical mechanical framework based on majorization to describe Wigner negative magic states for qudits of odd prime dimension processed under Clifford circuits. We show that majorization allows us to both quantify disorder in the Wigner representation and derive upper bounds for magic distillation. These bounds are shown to be tighter than other bounds, such as from mana and thauma, and can be used to incorporate hardware physics, such as temperature dependence and system Hamiltonians. We also show that a subset of single-shot Rényi entropies remain well-defined on quasi-distributions, are fully meaningful in terms of data processing and can acquire negative values that signal magic. We find that the mana of a magic state is the measure of divergence of these Rényi entropies as one approaches the Shannon entropy for Wigner distributions, and discuss how distillation lower bounds could be obtained in this setting. This use of majorization for quasi-distributions could find application in other studies of non-classicality, and raises nontrivial questions in the context of classical statistical mechanics.