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arXiv:2603.25023

Explicit States with Two-sided Long-Range Magic

Zhi Li

quant-phcond-mat.otherSubmitted Mar 26, 2026• Announced Mar 27, 2026• 0 citations
v1 · Mar 26, 2026v2 · Mar 30, 2026
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Abstract

Nonstabilizerness, or magic, is a necessary resource for quantum advantage beyond the classically simulatable Clifford framework. Recent works have begun to chart the structure of magic in many-body states, introducing the concepts of long-range magic -- nonstabilizerness that cannot be removed by finite-depth local unitary (FDU) circuits -- and the magic hierarchy, which classifies quantum circuits by alternating layers of Clifford and FDUs. In this work, we construct explicit states that provably possess two-sided long-range magic, a stronger form of magic meaning that they cannot be prepared by a Clifford circuit and a FDU in either order, thus placing them provably outside the first level of the magic hierarchy. Our examples include the ``magical cat" state, $|ψ\rangle \propto |0^n\rangle + |+^n\rangle$, and ground states of certain nonabelian topological orders. These results provide new examples and proof techniques for circuit complexity, and in doing so, reveal the connection between long-range magic, the structure of many-body phases, and the principles of quantum error correction.

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Nonstabilizerness, or magic, is a necessary resource for quantum advantage beyond the classically simulatable Clifford framework. Recent works have begun to chart the structure of magic in many-body states, introducing the concepts of long-range magic -- nonstabilizerness that cannot be removed by finite-depth local unitary (FDU) circuits -- and the magic hierarchy, which classifies quantum circuits by alternating layers of Clifford and FDUs. In this work, we construct explicit states that provably possess two-sided long-range magic, a stronger form of magic meaning that they cannot be prepared by a Clifford circuit and a FDU in either order, thus placing them provably outside the first level of the magic hierarchy. Our examples include the ``magical cat" state, ∣ψ⟩∝∣0n⟩+∣+n⟩|ψ\rangle \propto |0^n\rangle + |+^n\rangle∣ψ⟩∝∣0n⟩+∣+n⟩, and ground states of certain nonabelian topological orders. These results provide new examples and proof techniques for circuit complexity, and in doing so, reveal the connection between long-range magic, the structure of many-body phases, and the principles of quantum error correction.
We show that the low-energy states of non-Abelian topological orders possess extensive magic which is long-ranged, and cannot be eliminated by a constant-depth local unitary circuit. This refines conventional notions of complexity beyond the linear circuit depth which is required to prepare any topological phase, and provides a new resource-theoretic characterization of topological orders. A central technical result is a no-go theorem establishing that stabilizer states--even up to constant-depth local unitarie--cannot approximate low-energy states of non-Abelian string-net models which satisfy the entanglement bootstrap axioms. Moreover, we show that stabilizer-realizable Abelian string-net phases have mutual braiding phases quantized by the on-site qudit dimension, and that any violation of this condition necessarily implies extensive long-range magic. Extending to higher spatial dimensions, we argue that any state obeying an entanglement area law and hosting excitations with nontrivial fusion spaces must exhibit extensive long-range magic. This applies, in particular, to ground-states and low-energy states of higher-dimensional quantum double models.
As a necessary resource for quantum computational advantage, quantum magic (nonstabilizerness) is of fundamental importance in the study of quantum computation and physics. We develop a systematic theory of \emph{long-range magic (LRM)} -- nonstabilizerness that cannot be erased by shallow unitary circuits -- and demonstrate its broad relevance. By bridging LRM with fault-tolerant logical gate theory, we show the emergence of LRM families from quantum error-correcting codes and devise a simple yet powerful method for testing transversal logical gates. Further, we introduce and characterize \emph{LRM phases} in which all ground states exhibit LRM, and identify certain non-Abelian topological orders as representative examples. Then, adopting a complexity theory perspective, we demonstrate the classicality of non-LRM systems in e.g.~preparation and learning settings, and present a ``no low-energy trivial magic'' (NLTM) conjecture with key motivation in the quantum PCP context, for which our LRM results suggest a promising route. Additionally, we demonstrate how to diagnose LRM with correlation functions. The concepts and results admit substantive extensions to approximate (robust) and nongeometric scenarios. Our LRM theory illuminates profound new connections among quantum resources, computational advantage, error correction and fault tolerance, many-body physics, and complexity theory.
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.
We develop a Clifford-orbit framework for studying magic-protected entanglement, which we refer to as magical entanglement: the part of bipartite entanglement that remains after optimal stabilizer simplification. This construction leverages residual entanglement under Clifford reduction as a state-level organizing principle for magic state space. It defines canonical representatives, spectra, and ranks that characterize the Clifford-irreducible structure of a state. We identify two regimes of the magic-entanglement interplay. In the TTT-magic regime, local nonstabilizer resources can coexist with entanglement, but the protected component remains weak and state-dependent. In the WWW-magic regime, by contrast, entanglement is Clifford-irreducibly tied to nonstabilizerness, producing typical, strongly self-averaging behavior. Analytical examples and random-circuit numerics support a crossover from broad TTT-magic fluctuations to concentrated, Haar-like WWW-magic behavior. These results identify magical entanglement as an orbit-level diagnostic of how nonstabilizerness protects quantum correlations against Clifford reduction.
Magic (nonstabilizerness) is a necessary but "expensive" kind of "fuel" to drive universal fault-tolerant quantum computation.To properly study and characterize the origin of quantum "complexity" in computation as well as physics, it is crucial to develop a rigorous understanding of the quantification of magic.Previous studies of magic mostly focused on small systems and largely relied on the discrete Wigner formalism (which is only well behaved in odd prime power dimensions).Here we present an initiatory study of the magic of genuinely many-body quantum states that may be strongly entangled, with focus on the important case of many qubits, at a quantitative level.We first address the basic question of how "magical" a many-body state can be, and show that the maximum magic of an n-qubit state is essentially n, simultaneously for a range of "good" magic measures.As a corollary, the resource theory of magic has asymptotic golden currency states.We then show that, in fact, almost all n-qubit pure states have magic of nearly n.In the quest for explicit, scalable cases of highly entangled states whose magic can be understood, we connect the magic of hypergraph states with the second-order nonlinearity of their underlying Boolean functions.Next, we go on and investigate many-body magic in practical and physical contexts.We first consider a variant of measurement-based quantum computation where the client is restricted to Pauli measurements, in which magic is a necessary feature of the initial "resource" state.We show that n-qubit states with nearly n magic, or indeed almost all states, cannot supply nontrivial speedups over classical computers.We then present an example of analyzing the magic of "natural" condensed matter systems of physical interest.We apply the Boolean function techniques to derive explicit bounds on the magic of certain representative two-dimensional symmetry-protected topological states, and comment on possible further connections between magic and the quantum complexity of phases of matter.
Nonstabilizerness (magic) is the quantum resource that, together with stabilizer operations, makes universal quantum computation possible. However, quantifying nonstabilizerness is difficult. The standard measure sums over exponentially many Pauli operators, and for quantum codes no quantitative theory has been available. A structural observation removes this obstacle: the Clifford sector carries no magic and can be removed by a Clifford transformation, leaving an order-three object whose magic is an exactly evaluable fourth moment. Removing this inert background yields closed forms for several code families: a formula for all Dicke states, reducing a 100-qubit case from 41004^{100}4100 terms to a short binomial sum; a bound for cubic-phase codes (twisted quantum doubles and non-Abelian topological order), saturated only by the D4D_4D4​ code; and a cyclic/zero criterion for group multiplication states. For codeword-stabilized (CWS) codes, the companion paper \cite{Liu26arXiv} carries this reduction to its conclusion: the most magical codes are exactly the Sidon sets, and the nonstabilizerness bounds the code's transversal non-Clifford power. Together these results reduce the computation of nonstabilizerness for a broad class of codes to finite classical counting problems, and identify the maximally magical codes among them.