We investigate the effectiveness of the stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE), a quantifier associated with non-stabilizer resources (quantum magic), as an indicator of quantum phase transitions. Specifically, we analyze the behavior of the purity-corrected SRE of reduced density matrices in the ground states of two one-dimensional spin models: the transverse axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising (TANNNI) model and the quantum compass model (QCM). The ground state of the TANNNI model is obtained using exact diagonalization techniques, while the QCM is analyzed using the Jordan--Wigner (JW) transformation followed by Bogoliubov diagonalization of the resulting quadratic fermionic Hamiltonian. For the TANNNI model, the purity-corrected SRE successfully detects the antiphase--floating phase transition in the high-frustration regime, while in the low-frustration regime the raw (purity-uncorrected) SRE reproduces the known ferromagnetic--paramagnetic phase boundaries more accurately. For the QCM, the purity-corrected SRE exhibits a clear signature near the isotropic point \(J_x/J_z=1\), where the system undergoes a first-order quantum phase transition. Our results establish SRE of reduced states as a complementary probe of quantum criticality and provide further insight into the role of non-stabilizer resources in many-body quantum phase transitions.
Comments
Santanu Sarkar and George Biswas contributed equally to this work
We investigate the effectiveness of the stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE), a quantifier associated with non-stabilizer resources (quantum magic), as an indicator of quantum phase transitions. Specifically, we analyze the behavior of the purity-corrected SRE of reduced density matrices in the ground states of two one-dimensional spin models: the transverse axial next-nearest-neighbor Ising (TANNNI) model and the quantum compass model (QCM). The ground state of the TANNNI model is obtained using exact diagonalization techniques, while the QCM is analyzed using the Jordan--Wigner (JW) transformation followed by Bogoliubov diagonalization of the resulting quadratic fermionic Hamiltonian. For the TANNNI model, the purity-corrected SRE successfully detects the antiphase--floating phase transition in the high-frustration regime, while in the low-frustration regime the raw (purity-uncorrected) SRE reproduces the known ferromagnetic--paramagnetic phase boundaries more accurately. For the QCM, the purity-corrected SRE exhibits a clear signature near the isotropic point (J_x/J_z=1), where the system undergoes a first-order quantum phase transition. Our results establish SRE of reduced states as a complementary probe of quantum criticality and provide further insight into the role of non-stabilizer resources in many-body quantum phase transitions.
We investigate whether the second-order purity-corrected stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE) of reduced two-qubit density matrices can serve as a reliable local indicator of quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in frustrated quantum spin systems. We consider the one-dimensional isotropic J1−J2 Heisenberg model, the one-dimensional XXZ J1−J2 model, and the two-dimensional J1−J2 Heisenberg model on a 4×4 square lattice. Unlike several previously studied quantum information measures, which fail to detect QPTs in the ground state of these frustrated systems, the reduced ground-state purity-corrected SRE successfully identifies most transitions. For the remaining cases, we consider a low temperature subjacent state, modeled as a statistical mixture of the ground and first excited states with a Maxwell--Boltzmann-type occupation probability. For the 1D isotropic model, the subjacent-state SRE shows a discontinuity at the critical point, yielding αc(∞)=0.24116, in excellent agreement with established values; the ground-state SRE shows a point of inflection, yielding αc(∞)=0.2681. For the 1D XXZ model, the subjacent-state SRE reproduces the full anisotropy dependent phase diagram, while the ground-state SRE captures transitions only at low anisotropy. For the 2D model, the subjacent-state SRE detects two transitions, at αc(4×4)=0.40781 and 0.6208, while the ground-state SRE identifies the second at 0.6230. Compared with conventional two-qubit entanglement, purity-corrected SRE shows a clear advantage in revealing otherwise-invisible phase transitions, establishing it as a robust, efficient, local probe of frustrated quantum criticality.
Quantum magic---the resource that separates universal quantum computation from efficiently simulable Clifford circuits---has emerged as a diagnostic of many-body quantum states, yet the stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE) that quantifies it remains largely inaccessible in interacting fermion systems. Estimating the global SRE requires a sum over exponentially many Majorana strings, which in determinant quantum Monte Carlo can be sampled without a sign problem only for the interacting density matrix obtained after averaging the auxiliary fields: sampling strings and fields simultaneously incurs a sign problem even for sign-problem-free models, so that the known sign-free alternative is a nested Monte Carlo that does not scale. We propose instead the two-point SRE---a practical stabilizer-Rényi correlator built from rank-2 SREs of one- and two-site reduced density matrices, which are fixed exactly by single-particle Green functions and density correlations already measured in standard simulations---and show that it obeys universal finite-size scaling at fermionic quantum critical points. In the one-dimensional half-filled spinless t-V chain, the correlator distinguishes algebraic and exponential decay regimes and tracks the inverse-logarithmic finite-size drift characteristic of the Berezinskii--Kosterlitz--Thouless transition. On the honeycomb lattice, sign-problem-free quantum Monte Carlo yields Gross--Neveu--Ising scaling with finite anomalous dimension at zero temperature and two-dimensional Ising collapse at the thermal transition. Our results suggest stabilizer-Rényi microscopy as a spatially resolved, quantitatively universal probe of critical correlations in interacting fermionic matter, on par with conventional order-parameter correlators and accessible to quantum-simulator measurements.
We present a novel quantum Monte Carlo method for evaluating the α -stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE) for any integer α ≥ 2 . By interpreting the α -SRE as partition-function ratios, we eliminate the sign problem in the imaginary-time path integral by sampling within a , which enables efficient classical computations of the α -SRE and its derivatives to explore magic in previously inaccessible two- or higher-dimensional systems. We first isolate the free-energy part in 2 -SRE, which is a trivial term. Notably, at quantum critical points in one-dimensional or two-dimensional transverse-field Ising (TFI) models, we reveal nontrivial singularities associated with the contribution, directly tied to magic. Their interplay leads to complicated behaviors of 2 -SRE, avoiding extrema at critical points generally. In contrast, analyzing the volume-law correction to SRE reveals a discontinuity tied to criticalities, suggesting that it is more informative than the full-state magic. For conformal critical points, we claim that it could reflect nonlocal magic residing in correlations. Finally, we verify that 2 -SRE fails to characterize magic in mixed states (e.g., Gibbs states), yielding nonphysical results. This work provides a powerful tool for exploring the roles of magic in large-scale many-body systems and reveals the intrinsic relation between magic and many-body physics.
Magic is a property of a quantum state that characterizes its deviation from a stabilizer state, serving as a useful resource for achieving universal quantum computation e.g., within schemes that use Clifford operations. In this work, we study magic, as quantified by the stabilizer Renyi entropy, in a class of models known as generalized Rokhsar-Kivelson systems, i.e., Hamiltonians that allow a stochastic matrix form (SMF) decomposition. The ground state wavefunctions of these systems can be written explicitly throughout their phase diagram, and their properties can be related to associated classical statistical mechanics problems, thereby allowing powerful analytical and numerical approaches that are not usually available in conventional quantum many body settings. As a result, we are able to express the SRE in terms of wave function coefficients that can be understood as a free energy difference of related classical problems. We apply this insight to a range of quantum many body SMF Hamiltonians, which affords us to study numerically the SRE of large high-dimensional systems, and in some cases to obtain analytical results. We observe that the behaviour of the SRE is relatively featureless across quantum phase transitions in these systems, although it is indeed singular (in its first or higher order derivative, depending on the nature of the transition). On the contrary, we find that the maximum of the SRE generically occurs at a cusp away from the quantum critical point, where the derivative suddenly changes sign. Furthermore, we compare the SRE and the logarithm of overlaps with specific stabilizer states, asymptotically realised in the ground state phase diagrams of these systems. We find that they display strikingly similar behaviors, which in turn establish rigorous bounds on the min-relative entropy of magic.
While nonstabilizerness (''magic'') is a key resource for universal quantum computation, its behavior in many-body quantum systems, especially near criticality, remains poorly understood. We develop a spectral transfer-matrix framework for the stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE) in infinite matrix product states, showing that its spectrum contains universal subleading information. In particular, we identify an SRE correlation length -- distinct from the standard correlation length -- which diverges at continuous phase transitions and governs the spatial response of the SRE to local perturbations. We derive exact SRE expressions for the bond dimension χ=2 MPS ''skeleton'' of the cluster-Ising model, and we numerically probe its universal scaling along the Z2 critical lines in the phase diagram. These results demonstrate that nonstabilizerness captures signatures of criticality and local perturbations, providing a new lens on the interplay between computational resources and emergent phenomena in quantum many-body systems.
Shannon-Rényi and stabilizer entropies are key diagnostics of structure, "nonstabilizerness," phase transitions, and universality in quantum many-body states. We establish an exact correspondence for quadratic fermions: for any Gaussian eigenstate, the stabilizer Rényi entropy equals the Shannon-Rényi entropy of a number-conserving free-fermion eigenstate on a doubled system, evaluated in the computational basis. Specializing to the transverse-field Ising (TFI) chain, the TFI ground-state stabilizer entropies map to the Shannon-Rényi entropies of the XX-chain ground state of length 2L. Building on this correspondence, together with other exact identities we prove, we derive closed expressions for the stabilizer entropy at indices α=1/2,2, 4 for a broad class of critical closed free-fermion systems. Each of these can be written with respect to the universal functions of the TFI chain. We further derive conformal-field-theory scaling laws for the stabilizer entropy at arbitrary Rényi index under both periodic and open boundary conditions. At α=4, these scaling forms display a discontinuity for both open and periodic boundary conditions.