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arXiv:2608.22017

Quantifying Nonstabilizerness of Codeword-Stabilized Codes

Yuan Liu, Ke-Mi Xu

quant-phSubmitted Aug 22, 2026• Announced Aug 25, 2026• 0 citations
v1 · Aug 22, 2026v2 · Oct 19, 2026
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Abstract

Fault-tolerant quantum computation requires non-Clifford gates, which stabilizer codes cannot supply transversally. Non-stabilizer codes are the natural place to look for them, yet no quantitative theory of the nonstabilizerness (or magic) carried by such a code has existed. We develop one for codeword-stabilized (CWS) codes and show that the key quantity is classical: a code's nonstabilizerness is fixed by how its codewords collide under translation, a question that belongs to additive combinatorics. We show that the most magical codes are exactly the Sidon sets whenever a Sidon set of the required size exists, whose pairwise differences are all distinct. No code carries more than twice its number of logical qubits of nonstabilizerness however large it is physically. Furthermore, the same reduction gives structural and operational results. Nonstabilizerness is unchanged by coset closure, which yields non-stabilizer codes with arbitrarily many logical qubits and constant nonstabilizerness as the number of logical qubits grows. A diagonal transversal gate with $k$ logic qubits that is non-Clifford on $t$ coordinates forces the code's nonstabilizerness to be at most $2(k-t)$; thus the nonstabilizerness also bounds the non-Clifford gates needed to build the code and the cost of classically simulating it. Finally, entire families become exactly computable, and we obtain closed-form values for the Kerdock codes. Together these results turn the search for magic-rich codes and transversal non-Clifford gates into classical counting problems, which can be approached with standard tools from additive combinatorics.

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On Optimality of CSS Codes for Transversal T

Narayanan Rengaswamy, Robert Calderbank, Michael Newman +1 more

In order to perform universal fault-tolerant quantum computation, one needs to implement a logical non-Clifford gate. Consequently, it is important to understand codes that implement such gates transversally. In this paper, we adopt an algebraic approach to characterize all stabilizer codes for which transversal T and T†gates preserve the codespace. Our Heisenberg perspective reduces this question to a finite geometry problem that translates to the design of certain classical codes. We prove three corollaries of this result: (a) For any non-degenerate [n, k, d] stabilizer code supporting a physical transversal T (which might not be logical T), there exists an [n, k, d]] CSS code with the same property; (b) Triorthogonal codes form the most general family of CSS codes that realize logical transversal T via physical transversal T; (c) Triorthogonality is necessary for physical transversal T on a CSS code to realize the logical identity. The main tool we use is a recent characterization of a particular family of diagonal gates in the Clifford hierarchy that are efficiently described by symmetric matrices over rings of integers [N. Rengaswamy et al., Phys. Rev. A 100, 022304]. We refer to these operations as Quadratic Form Diagonal (QFD) gates. Our framework generalizes all existing stabilizer code constructions that realize logical gates via transversal T. We provide several examples of codes and briefly discuss connections to decreasing monomial codes, pin codes, generalized triorthogonality and quasitransversality. We partially extend these results towards characterizing all stabilizer codes that support transversal π/2ℓZ-rotations. In particular, using Ax's theorem on residue weights of polynomials, we provide an alternate characterization of logical gates induced by transversal π/2ℓZ-rotations on a family of quantum Reed-Muller codes. We also briefly discuss a general approach to analyze QFD gates that might lead to a characterization of all stabilizer codes that support any given physical transversal 1- or 2-local diagonal gate.

arXiv:1910.09333•IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory•Jul 30, 2020•56 citations
Fault-tolerant quantum computation requires non-Clifford gates, which stabilizer codes cannot supply transversally. Non-stabilizer codes are the natural place to look for them, yet no quantitative theory of the nonstabilizerness (or magic) carried by such a code has existed. We develop one for codeword-stabilized (CWS) codes and show that the key quantity is classical: a code's nonstabilizerness is fixed by how its codewords collide under translation, a question that belongs to additive combinatorics. We show that the most magical codes are exactly the Sidon sets whenever a Sidon set of the required size exists, whose pairwise differences are all distinct. No code carries more than twice its number of logical qubits of nonstabilizerness however large it is physically. Furthermore, the same reduction gives structural and operational results. Nonstabilizerness is unchanged by coset closure, which yields non-stabilizer codes with arbitrarily many logical qubits and constant nonstabilizerness as the number of logical qubits grows. A diagonal transversal gate with kkk logic qubits that is non-Clifford on ttt coordinates forces the code's nonstabilizerness to be at most 2(k−t)2(k-t)2(k−t); thus the nonstabilizerness also bounds the non-Clifford gates needed to build the code and the cost of classically simulating it. Finally, entire families become exactly computable, and we obtain closed-form values for the Kerdock codes. Together these results turn the search for magic-rich codes and transversal non-Clifford gates into classical counting problems, which can be approached with standard tools from additive combinatorics.
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.
Codeword-stabilized quantum codes give a unified graph-state description of stabilizer and nonadditive quantum error-correcting codes. Although each individual CWS word state is stabilizer, coherent superpositions of different word states can be nonstabilizer. We develop a CWS-adapted magic-witness framework that isolates this codeword coherence and converts it into certified lower bounds on robustness of magic. The main result is an exact reduction of the stabilizer threshold of a natural CWS coherence witness to a finite-geometric problem over the classical CWS word set. For general weighted superpositions, the threshold is computed by enumerating affine intersections and affine-quadratic phases. For equal-weight superpositions, the phase optimization collapses, and the threshold is determined entirely by how many CWS words can lie in affine flats of each dimension. Thus a quantum optimization over stabilizer states becomes a classical affine-incidence problem. This reduction yields a fixed-parameter algorithm, an analytic lower bound for an infinite union-stabilizer family, and exact rational certificates for several standard nonadditive CWS examples. The framework also clarifies why exact enumeration fails for large structured families and identifies the remaining task as an affine-intersection problem. The result provides a geometric mechanism by which nonlinear CWS word sets generate certifiable magic.
A fundamental problem in fault-tolerant quantum computation is the tradeoff between universality and dimensionality, exemplified by the the Bravyi-König bound for nnn-dimensional topological stabilizer codes. In this work, we extend topological Pauli stabilizer codes to a broad class of nnn-dimensional Clifford hierarchy stabilizer codes. These codes correspond to the (n+1)(n+1)(n+1)D Dijkgraaf-Witten gauge theories with non-Abelian topological order. We construct transversal non-Clifford gates through automorphism symmetries represented by cup products. In 2D, we obtain the first transversal non-Clifford logical gates including T and CS for Clifford stabilizer codes, using the automorphism of the twisted Z23\mathbb{Z}_2^3Z23​ gauge theory (equivalent to D4\mathbb{D}_4D4​ topological order). We also combine it with the just-in-time decoder to fault-tolerantly prepare the logical T magic state in O(d)O(d)O(d) rounds via code switching. In 3D, we construct a transversal logical T\sqrt{\text{T}}T​ gate in a non-Clifford stabilizer code at the third level of the Clifford hierarchy, located on a tetrahedron corresponding to a twisted Z24\mathbb{Z}_2^4Z24​ gauge theory. Our constructions surpass the Bravyi-König bound by achieving the logical gates in the (n+1)(n+1)(n+1)-th level of Clifford hierarchy in nnn spatial dimension.
Non-Clifford operations required for universal quantum computation can be implemented by measuring logical Clifford operators. We present a generalized framework to fault-tolerantly measure transversal Clifford logical operators in quantum low-density parity check (QLDPC) codes. Our protocol takes any QLDPC code and deforms the code across additional ancillary qubits such that a product of stabilizers measures the desired logical Clifford operator. We prove that the deformed, Clifford-stabilized code remains LDPC and that its distance is preserved up to a constant factor independent of the number of physical qubits. We further prove that the Clifford measurement has a fault distance against data qubit and measurement errors that grows linearly with the distance of the original code. We apply our methods to implement logical non-Clifford gates in algorithmically relevant subroutines and to prepare magic states in quantum stabilizer codes.
We study the structure and transversal logical capabilities of stabilizer quantum error correcting codes. Among our results, we identify universal lower bounds on circuit depth to generate a full logical Clifford algebra, and develop novel constructions of logical transversal gates including a new depth-one transversal phase S‾\mathrm{\overline{S}}S gate in the rotated surface code and a depth-one intra-block CZ‾\mathrm{\overline{CZ}}CZ gate in the 2D-toric code that generalizes to all odd distances and all lengths L≥3L\ge3L≥3, respectively. Finally, we construct a high-rate non-LDPC CSS code family with parameters [[n,n,Θ(nβ)]][[n,\sqrt{n},Θ({n^β})]][[n,n​,Θ(nβ)]] where β≈0.2823β\approx 0.2823β≈0.2823 in one demonstrated case, that provably possesses a constant-depth complete 2-local transversal logical Clifford basis instruction set architecture (ISA) composed of all individually targeted S‾\mathrm{\overline{S}}S, SHS‾=X\mathrm{\overline{SHS}} = \sqrt{X}SHS=X​, and CZ‾\mathrm{\overline{CZ}}CZ gates. This ISA is depth-one for certain subfamilies that we design and generally constant-depth under certain conditions. The code family is built from a small code with parameters [[n0,2,d0]][[n_0, 2, d_0]][[n0​,2,d0​]], and is tunable in the standard way: it tiles out to form utility-scale logical qubit counts, and it scales up through concatenation to achieve higher distances and error suppression. We show that this construction preserves the depth-one complete transversal logical Clifford basis ISA when composed with these commuting construction actions, inheriting structure from the core codes so that at scale the complete logical Clifford basis ISA remains depth-one up to depth-two addressable operations between tiled cores. We call these Quantum Logic Codes.
In order to perform universal fault-tolerant quantum computation, one needs to implement a logical non-Clifford gate. Consequently, it is important to understand codes that implement such gates transversally. In this paper, we adopt an algebraic approach to characterize all stabilizer codes for which transversal T and T†gates preserve the codespace. Our Heisenberg perspective reduces this question to a finite geometry problem that translates to the design of certain classical codes. We prove three corollaries of this result: (a) For any non-degenerate [n, k, d] stabilizer code supporting a physical transversal T (which might not be logical T), there exists an [n, k, d]] CSS code with the same property; (b) Triorthogonal codes form the most general family of CSS codes that realize logical transversal T via physical transversal T; (c) Triorthogonality is necessary for physical transversal T on a CSS code to realize the logical identity. The main tool we use is a recent characterization of a particular family of diagonal gates in the Clifford hierarchy that are efficiently described by symmetric matrices over rings of integers [N. Rengaswamy et al., Phys. Rev. A 100, 022304]. We refer to these operations as Quadratic Form Diagonal (QFD) gates. Our framework generalizes all existing stabilizer code constructions that realize logical gates via transversal T. We provide several examples of codes and briefly discuss connections to decreasing monomial codes, pin codes, generalized triorthogonality and quasitransversality. We partially extend these results towards characterizing all stabilizer codes that support transversal π/2ℓZ-rotations. In particular, using Ax's theorem on residue weights of polynomials, we provide an alternate characterization of logical gates induced by transversal π/2ℓZ-rotations on a family of quantum Reed-Muller codes. We also briefly discuss a general approach to analyze QFD gates that might lead to a characterization of all stabilizer codes that support any given physical transversal 1- or 2-local diagonal gate.