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arXiv:2603.16762

An asymmetry lower bound on fermionic non-Gaussianity

Filiberto Ares, Michele Mazzoni, Sara Murciano, Dávid Szász-Schagrin, Pasquale Calabrese, Lorenzo Piroli

quant-phcond-mat.stat-mechmath-phSubmitted Mar 17, 2026• Announced Mar 18, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Fermionic Gaussian states are a fundamental tool in many-body physics, faithfully representing non-interacting quantum systems and allowing for efficient numerical simulations. Given a many-body wave function, it is therefore interesting to ask how much it differs from that of a Gaussian state, as quantified by the notion of non-Gaussianity. In this work, we relate measures of non-Gaussianity with the Shannon entropy of the particle-number distribution, coinciding with the particle-number asymmetry for pure states. We derive a lower bound on the relative entropy of non-Gaussianity in terms of the exponential of the Shannon entropy, and study numerically its tightness for large system sizes. Our bound is non-trivial for large values of the asymmetry and relies on the concentration of the particle-number distribution of (mixed) fermionic Gaussian states. Since the Shannon entropy of the particle-number distribution is often efficient to compute or experimentally measure, our results can be viewed as a practical way to lower bound non-Gaussianity, highlighting a non-trivial interplay with particle-number asymmetry.

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14 pages, 1 figure

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Fermionic Gaussian states are a fundamental tool in many-body physics, faithfully representing non-interacting quantum systems and allowing for efficient numerical simulations. Given a many-body wave function, it is therefore interesting to ask how much it differs from that of a Gaussian state, as quantified by the notion of non-Gaussianity. In this work, we relate measures of non-Gaussianity with the Shannon entropy of the particle-number distribution, coinciding with the particle-number asymmetry for pure states. We derive a lower bound on the relative entropy of non-Gaussianity in terms of the exponential of the Shannon entropy, and study numerically its tightness for large system sizes. Our bound is non-trivial for large values of the asymmetry and relies on the concentration of the particle-number distribution of (mixed) fermionic Gaussian states. Since the Shannon entropy of the particle-number distribution is often efficient to compute or experimentally measure, our results can be viewed as a practical way to lower bound non-Gaussianity, highlighting a non-trivial interplay with particle-number asymmetry.
Entanglement in a pure state of a many-body system can be characterized by the Rényi entropies S^{(\alpha)}=\ln\textrm{tr}(\rho^\alpha)/(1-\alpha) S ( α ) = ln tr ( ρ α ) / ( 1 − α ) of the reduced density matrix \rho ρ of a subsystem. These entropies are, however, difficult to access experimentally and can typically be determined for small systems only. Here we show that for free fermionic systems in a Gaussian state and with particle number conservation, S^{(2)} S ( 2 ) can be tightly bound—from above and below—by the much easier accessible Rényi number entropy S^{(2)}_N=-\ln \sum_n p^2(n) S N ( 2 ) = − ln ∑ n p 2 ( n ) which is a function of the probability distribution p(n) p ( n ) of the total particle number in the considered subsystem only. A dynamical growth in entanglement, in particular, is therefore always accompanied by a growth—albeit logarithmically slower—of the number entropy. We illustrate this relation by presenting numerical results for quenches in non-interacting one-dimensional lattice models including disorder-free, Anderson-localized, and critical systems with off-diagonal (bond) disorder.
Fermionic Gaussian states form a central class of classically tractable quantum states, while fermionic non-Gaussianity provides the resource required to go beyond free-fermion dynamics. A key challenge is to quantify this resource through monotones that are both mathematically rigorous and experimentally accessible. Here, we show that the fermionic entropy, defined through the squared Frobenius norm of the correlation matrix, is a strong pure-state Gaussian monotone. Its simple closed-form expression also makes it directly measurable: we show that the associated fermionic purity can be unbiasedly estimated up to additive error ε\varepsilonε using O(ε−2)O(\varepsilon^{-2})O(ε−2) two-copy measurements, independently of the system size. Moreover, we prove that the fermionic entropy obeys asymptotic continuity and, as a direct consequence, establish its operational meaning as the upper bound to the asymptotic rate of non-Gaussianity distillation. We further derive a linear sample complexity bound for tolerant testing of fermionic Gaussian states, providing a quadratic improvement over the state of the art. As a further application of our results, we study unitary designs generated by Matchgate circuits supplemented with Majorana-local non-Gaussian gates. We prove that a linear number of such gates is necessary even to achieve an approximate state 222-design with error below 0.4%0.4\%0.4%. Combined with known nearly linear upper bounds for relative-error designs, this determines the optimal doping level, up to logarithmic factors, across all relevant design notions and reveals the extensive non-Gaussianity cost required to generate Haar-like quantum dynamics in this architecture.
Fermionic non-Gaussianity, or fermionic magic, is a key resource underlying the computational complexity of fermionic quantum systems, yet tractable and operationally meaningful ways to quantify it remain limited. We address this challenge by developing a convex resource theory of fermionic non-Gaussianity and introducing two families of computable quantities for pure fermionic states, both derived from the Williamson normal form of the covariance matrix. The first family, occupation number entropies, is defined as the Tsallis-ααα entropy of the occupation numbers. We prove that one member of this family is monotonic under Gaussian protocols, establishing it as a computable convex resource monotone. It consequently lower bounds the number of non-Gaussian gates needed for state preparation. The second family, natural-orbital participation entropies, is given by the Rényi-ααα entropy of the squared amplitudes of the state in the natural-orbital basis, defined by the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix. They quantify state compressibility in this basis and thus upper bound the classical simulation cost in an orthonormal Gaussian basis. We analyze both families for stabilizer and translation-invariant states, where they simplify and reveal additional structure. We further study representative examples, including random SWAP-doped matchgate circuits and the bond-modulated XXZ model, highlighting the role of non-Gaussianity in many-body phenomena. Our work establishes a resource-theoretic framework for computable fermionic non-Gaussianity that unifies notions arising across quantum information, condensed-matter physics, and quantum chemistry, opening new directions for studying the complexity of quantum many-body systems and providing practical tools to assess the classical simulability of fermionic states relevant for quantum advantage.
Non-Gaussian states are essential resources in quantum information processing. In this work, we investigate methods for quantifying bosonic non-Gaussianity in many-body systems. Building on recent theoretical insights into the self-convolution properties of bosonic pure states, we introduce non-Gaussian entropy as a new measure to characterize non-Gaussianity in bosonic pure states. We further propose a practical protocol for measuring non-Gaussian entropy using three beam splitters and four copies of the input state. In addition, we extend this framework to mixed states, providing a general approach to quantifying non-Gaussianity. Our results offer a convenient and efficient method for characterizing bosonic non-Gaussianity, paving the way for its implementation on near-term experimental platforms.
Fermionic Gaussian states describe free fermions and underlie the mean-field picture of matter, from metals to superconductors; they are also efficiently simulable on classical computers. Departures from Gaussianity -- the correlations produced by interactions -- are therefore what make a fermionic system hard to simulate classically and useful for quantum computation, analogous to the role of magic in stabilizer-based quantum computation. Yet detecting and quantifying such non-Gaussianity at scale has remained challenging. Here we introduce practical tests and witnesses of fermionic non-Gaussianity built on fermionic antiflatness, a measure derived from the two-point covariance matrix. We estimate it with two protocols -- a two-copy Bell measurement and a single-copy scheme using commuting Majorana bilinears -- that determine whether a state is Gaussian or far from it at lower measurement cost than existing approaches, using only operations native to fault-tolerant hardware. For mixed states, a purity-corrected witness certifies non-Gaussianity and remains robust under strong noise; running it on the IQM quantum processor, we find that noise can both reduce and enhance non-Gaussianity. Finally, we show that preparing pseudorandom fermionic states requires extensive non-Gaussianity. Together, these tools enable the study and certification of non-Gaussian fermionic resources on present-day quantum devices.
Fermionic non-Gaussianity is a resource for universal quantum computation that can be generated by interactions in quantum many-body systems. Using the magic Rényi entropy (MRE) as a measure of non-Gaussianity, we derive its universal upper bound and Haar mean, proving that typical Haar-random states attain the maximal MRE density of ln⁡(4/3)\ln(4/3)ln(4/3) per Majorana in the large-system limit. We also show that the MRE can differ extensively between states with identical covariance matrices. To investigate how non-Gaussianity grows toward this maximal density, we evolve a Gaussian state in imaginary and real time under the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev Hamiltonian. By varying the imaginary- and real-time durations, we identify a first-order transition marked by a kink in the MRE density and spontaneous breaking of the permutation symmetry among the four copies used to evaluate the MRE. This transition represents a qualitative change in the non-Gaussianity of the state that is not reflected in the thermal free energy.