We investigate the emergence of quantum complexity and chaos in doped Clifford circuits acting on qudits of odd prime dimension d . Using doped Clifford Weingarten calculus and a replica tensor network formalism, we derive exact results and perform large-scale simulations in regimes challenging for tensor network and Pauli-based methods. We begin by analyzing generalized stabilizer entropies, computable magic monotones in many-qudit systems, and identify a dynamical phase transition in the doping rate, marking the breakdown of classical simulability and the onset of Haar-random behavior. The critical behavior is governed by the qudit dimension and the magic content of the non-Clifford gate. Using the qudit T -gate as a benchmark, we show that higher-dimensional qudits converge faster to Haar-typical stabilizer entropies. For qutrits ( d = 3 ), analytical predictions match numerics on brickwork circuits, showing that locality plays a limited role in magic spreading. We also examine anticoncentration and entanglement growth, showing that O ( log N ) non-Clifford gates suffice for approximating Haar expectation values to precision ε , and relate antiflatness measures to stabilizer entropies in qutrit systems. Finally, we analyze out-of-time-order correlators and show that a finite density of non-Clifford gates is needed to induce chaos, with a sharp transition fixed by the local dimension, twice that of the magic transition. Altogether, these results establish a unified framework for diagnosing complexity in doped Clifford circuits and deepen our understanding of resource theories in multiqudit systems.
We investigate the emergence of quantum complexity and chaos in doped Clifford circuits acting on qudits of odd prime dimension d . Using doped Clifford Weingarten calculus and a replica tensor network formalism, we derive exact results and perform large-scale simulations in regimes challenging for tensor network and Pauli-based methods. We begin by analyzing generalized stabilizer entropies, computable magic monotones in many-qudit systems, and identify a dynamical phase transition in the doping rate, marking the breakdown of classical simulability and the onset of Haar-random behavior. The critical behavior is governed by the qudit dimension and the magic content of the non-Clifford gate. Using the qudit T -gate as a benchmark, we show that higher-dimensional qudits converge faster to Haar-typical stabilizer entropies. For qutrits ( d = 3 ), analytical predictions match numerics on brickwork circuits, showing that locality plays a limited role in magic spreading. We also examine anticoncentration and entanglement growth, showing that O ( log N ) non-Clifford gates suffice for approximating Haar expectation values to precision ε , and relate antiflatness measures to stabilizer entropies in qutrit systems. Finally, we analyze out-of-time-order correlators and show that a finite density of non-Clifford gates is needed to induce chaos, with a sharp transition fixed by the local dimension, twice that of the magic transition. Altogether, these results establish a unified framework for diagnosing complexity in doped Clifford circuits and deepen our understanding of resource theories in multiqudit systems.
We study the emergence of complexity in deep random N -qubit T -gate-doped Clifford circuits, as reflected in their spectral properties and in magic generation, characterized by the stabilizer Rényi entropy distribution and the nonstabilizing power of the circuit. For pure (undoped) Clifford circuits, a unique periodic orbit structure in the space of Pauli strings implies peculiar spectral correlations and level statistics with large degeneracies. T -gate doping induces an exponentially fast transition to chaotic behavior, described by random matrix theory. We compare these complexity indicators with magic generation properties of the Clifford + T ensemble, and determine the distribution of magic, as well as the average nonstabilizing power of the quantum circuit ensemble. In the dilute limit, N T ≪ N , magic generation is governed by single-qubit behavior. Magic is generated in approximate quanta, increases approximately linearly with the number of T gates, N T , and displays a discrete distribution for small N T . At N T ≈ N , the distribution becomes quasicontinuous, and for N T ≫ N , it converges to that of Haar-random unitaries, and averages to a finite magic density, m 2 , lim N → ∞ 〈 m 2 〉 Haar = 1 . This is in contrast to the spectral transition, where O ( 1 ) T gates suffice to remove spectral degeneracies and to induce a transition to chaotic behavior in the thermodynamic limit. Magic is therefore a more sensitive indicator of complexity.
We introduce the Clifford entropy, a measure of how close an arbitrary unitary is to a Clifford unitary, which generalizes the stabilizer entropy for states. We show that this quantity vanishes if and only if a unitary is Clifford, is invariant under composition with Clifford unitaries, and is subadditive under tensor products. Rewriting the Clifford entropy in terms of the stabilizer entropy of the corresponding Choi state allows us to derive an upper bound: that this bound is not tight follows from considering the properties of symmetric informationally complete sets. Nevertheless we are able to numerically estimate the maximum in low dimensions, comparing it to the average over all unitaries, which we derive analytically. Finally, harnessing a concentration of measure result, we show that as the dimension grows large, with probability approaching unity, the ratio between the Clifford entropy of a Haar random unitary and that of a fixed magic gate gives a lower bound on the depth of a doped Clifford circuit which realizes the former in terms of the latter. In fact, numerical evidence suggests that this result holds reliably even in low dimensions. We conclude with several directions for future research.
Anticoncentration describes how an ensemble of quantum states spreads over the allowed Hilbert space, leading to statistically uniform output probability distributions. In this work, we investigate the anticoncentration of random Clifford circuits toward the overlap distribution of random stabilizer states. Using exact analytical techniques and extensive numerical simulations based on Clifford replica tensor networks, we demonstrate that random Clifford circuits fully anticoncentrate in logarithmic circuit depth; namely, higher-order moments of the overlap distribution converge to those of random stabilizer states. Moreover, we investigate the effect of introducing a controlled number of non-Clifford (magic) resources into Clifford circuits. We show that inserting a polylogarithmic in qudit number of T states is sufficient to drive the overlap distribution toward the Porter-Thomas statistics, effectively recovering full quantum randomness. In short, this fact presents doped tensor networks and shallow Clifford circuits as pseudomagic quantum states. Our results clarify the interplay between Clifford dynamics, magic-state injection, and quantum complexity, with implications for quantum circuit sampling, many-body quantum physics, and the benchmarking of quantum computational advantage.
Recent years have enjoyed a strong interest in exploring properties and applications of random quantum circuits. In this work, we explore the ensemble of t -doped Clifford circuits on n qubits, consisting of Clifford circuits interspersed with t single-qubit non-Clifford gates. We establish rigorous convergence bounds toward unitary k -designs, revealing the intrinsic cost in terms of non-Clifford resources in various flavors. First, we analyze the k th order frame potential, which quantifies how well the ensemble of doped Clifford circuits is spread within the unitary group. We prove that a quadratic doping level, t = Θ ~ ( k 2 ) , is both necessary and sufficient to approximate the frame potential of the full unitary group. As a consequence, we refine existing upper bounds on the convergence of the ensemble toward state k -designs. Second, we derive tight bounds on the convergence of t -doped Clifford circuits toward relative-error k -designs, showing that t = Θ ~ ( n k ) is both necessary and sufficient for the ensemble to form a relative ε -approximate k -design. Similarly, t = Θ ~ ( n ) is required to generate pseudorandom unitaries. All these results highlight that generating random unitaries is extremely costly in terms of non-Clifford resources, and that such ensembles fundamentally lie beyond the classical simulability barrier. Additionally, we analyze high-order doped-Clifford-Weingarten functions to derive analytic expressions for the twirling operator over the ensemble of random doped Clifford circuits, and we establish their asymptotic behavior in relevant regimes.
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.
We investigate the statistical properties of orthogonal, or real, Clifford circuits doped with magic and imaginary resources. By developing the Weingarten calculus for the real Clifford group, we derive the exact overlap distribution of real stabilizer states, identifying a new universality class: the orthogonal Clifford Porter-Thomas distribution. We prove that local real architectures recover this global statistic in logarithmic depth. Furthermore, we uncover a sharp hierarchy in resource requirements: while retrieving Haar statistics necessitates a polylogarithmic amount of magic states, recovering the full unitary Clifford statistics requires only a single phase gate.