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arXiv:2609.06177

Quantifying Nonstabilizerness of Quantum Codes by Removing the Inert Background

Yuan Liu, Ke-Mi Xu

quant-phmath-phSubmitted Sep 5, 2026• Announced Sep 8, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Oct 8, 2026 (v2)
v1 · Sep 5, 2026v2 · Oct 8, 2026
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Abstract

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 $4^{100}$ terms to a short binomial sum; a bound for cubic-phase codes (twisted quantum doubles and non-Abelian topological order), saturated only by the $D_4$ 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.

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Universal quantum computation requires non-Clifford gates, which stabilizer codes can provide transversally only up to a finite level of the Clifford hierarchy. Non-stabilizer codes are not subject to this bound and are the natural candidates to fill the gap. However, it is difficult to efficiently evaluate the nonstabilizerness (or magic) of non-stabilizer codes. Here, we resolve this problem for codeword-stabilized (CWS) codes by showing that the nonstabilizerness of a CWS code is determined by the difference structure of its codewords. Whenever a Sidon set of the required size exists, the most magical codes are related to the Sidon sets, whose pairwise differences are all distinct. Structural analysis demonstrates that nonstabilizerness is invariant under coset closure, giving rise to non-stabilizer codes with arbitrarily many logical qubits and constant nonstabilizerness. Nonstabilizerness of whole code families becomes exactly computable, and we obtain closed-form values for the Kerdock codes. Moreover, we reveal a tradeoff between nonstabilizerness and transversal gates. For a code with $k$ logical qubits, a diagonal transversal gate that is non-Clifford on $t$ coordinates forces the nonstabilizerness benchmark to be at most $2(k-t)$. These results reduce the search for codes with high nonstabilizerness and for transversal non-Clifford gates to classical counting problems, to which the standard tools of additive combinatorics apply.

quant-pharXiv:2608.22017•Aug 25, 2026•0 citations

Affine-Profile Stabilizer Thresholds for Magic in Codeword-Stabilized Quantum Codes

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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.

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Extremizing Measures of Magic on Pure States by Clifford-stabilizer States

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Magic states enable universal, fault-tolerant quantum computation within the stabilizer framework. Their non-stabilizerness supplies the resource needed to bypass the Eastin-Knill theorem while allowing fault-tolerant distillation. Although many measures of magic exist, not every nonzero-magic state is known to be distillable, and many of currently known distillable states are special cases of Clifford-stabilizer states, defined as pure states uniquely stabilized by finite Clifford subgroups. We develop a general framework for group-covariant functionals on Hermitian operators, introducing the notions of $G$-stabilizer spaces, states, and codes for arbitrary finite subgroups $G \subset \mathrm{U}(\mathcal{H})$. We define analytic families of $G$-covariant functionals and prove that any $G$-invariant pure state is extremal for a broad class of derived functionals, including symmetric, max-type, and Rényi-type functionals, whenever the underlying family is $G$-covariant. This extremality holds for purity-preserving variations orthogonal to the stabilized subspace. Specializing to the Pauli and Clifford groups, we recover the extremality structure of canonical magic measures such as mana, stabilizer Rényi entropies, generalized Rényi entropies, and stabilizer fidelity, and show that Clifford-stabilizer states extremize them. We classify such states for qubits, qutrits, ququints, and two-qubit systems, identifying new candidates for magic distillation. We further propose an inefficient distillation protocol for a two-qubit magic state with stabilizer fidelity exceeding standard benchmarks, and conjecture that SIC-POVM fiducial states are Clifford-stabilizer states.

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The nonstabilizerness of quantum states is a necessary resource for universal quantum computation, yet its characterization is notoriously demanding. Quantifying nonstabilizerness typically requires an exponential number of measurements and a doubly exponential classical post-processing cost to evaluate its standard monotones. In this work, we show that nonstabilizerness is, to a large extent, in the eyes of the beholder: it can be witnessed and quantified using any set of $m$ $n$-qubit Pauli measurements, provided the set contains anti-commuting pairs. We introduce a general framework that projects the stabilizer polytope onto the subspace defined by these observables and provide an algorithm that estimates magic from Pauli expectation values with runtime exponential in the number of measurements $m$ and polynomial in the number of qubits $n$. By relating the problem to a stabilizer-restricted variant of the quantum marginal problem, we also prove that deciding membership in the corresponding reduced stabilizer polytope is NP-hard. In particular, unless $\mathrm{P} = \mathrm{NP}$, no algorithm polynomial in $m$ can solve the problem in full generality, thus establishing fundamental complexity-theoretic limitations. Finally, we employ our framework to compute nonstabilizerness in different Hamiltonian ground states, demonstrating the practical performance of our method in regimes beyond the reach of existing techniques.

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A fundamental problem in fault-tolerant quantum computation is the tradeoff between universality and dimensionality, exemplified by the the Bravyi-König bound for $n$-dimensional topological stabilizer codes. In this work, we extend topological Pauli stabilizer codes to a broad class of $n$-dimensional Clifford hierarchy stabilizer codes. These codes correspond to the $(n+1)$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 $\mathbb{Z}_2^3$ gauge theory (equivalent to $\mathbb{D}_4$ topological order). We also combine it with the just-in-time decoder to fault-tolerantly prepare the logical T magic state in $O(d)$ rounds via code switching. In 3D, we construct a transversal logical $\sqrt{\text{T}}$ gate in a non-Clifford stabilizer code at the third level of the Clifford hierarchy, located on a tetrahedron corresponding to a twisted $\mathbb{Z}_2^4$ gauge theory. Our constructions surpass the Bravyi-König bound by achieving the logical gates in the $(n+1)$-th level of Clifford hierarchy in $n$ spatial dimension.

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Predicting Magic from Very Few Measurements

J. M. Varela, L. L. Keller, A. de Oliveira +3 more

The nonstabilizerness of quantum states is a necessary resource for universal quantum computation, yet its characterization is notoriously demanding. Quantifying nonstabilizerness typically requires an exponential number of measurements and a doubly exponential classical post-processing cost to evaluate its standard monotones. In this work, we show that nonstabilizerness is, to a large extent, in the eyes of the beholder: it can be witnessed and quantified using set of m n -qubit Pauli measurements, provided the set contains anti-commuting pairs. We introduce a general framework that projects the stabilizer polytope onto the subspace defined by these observables and provide an algorithm that estimates magic from Pauli expectation values with runtime exponential in the number of measurements m and polynomial in the number of qubits n . By relating the problem to a stabilizer-restricted variant of the quantum marginal problem, we also prove that deciding membership in the corresponding reduced stabilizer polytope is NP-hard. In particular, unless P = NP , no algorithm polynomial in m can solve the problem in full generality, thus establishing fundamental complexity-theoretic limitations. Finally, we employ our framework to compute nonstabilizerness in different Hamiltonian ground states, demonstrating the practical performance of our method in regimes beyond the reach of existing techniques.

PRX Quantum•Jul 31, 2026•0 citations
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.
Universal quantum computation requires non-Clifford gates, which stabilizer codes can provide transversally only up to a finite level of the Clifford hierarchy. Non-stabilizer codes are not subject to this bound and are the natural candidates to fill the gap. However, it is difficult to efficiently evaluate the nonstabilizerness (or magic) of non-stabilizer codes. Here, we resolve this problem for codeword-stabilized (CWS) codes by showing that the nonstabilizerness of a CWS code is determined by the difference structure of its codewords. Whenever a Sidon set of the required size exists, the most magical codes are related to the Sidon sets, whose pairwise differences are all distinct. Structural analysis demonstrates that nonstabilizerness is invariant under coset closure, giving rise to non-stabilizer codes with arbitrarily many logical qubits and constant nonstabilizerness. Nonstabilizerness of whole code families becomes exactly computable, and we obtain closed-form values for the Kerdock codes. Moreover, we reveal a tradeoff between nonstabilizerness and transversal gates. For a code with kkk logical qubits, a diagonal transversal gate that is non-Clifford on ttt coordinates forces the nonstabilizerness benchmark to be at most 2(k−t)2(k-t)2(k−t). These results reduce the search for codes with high nonstabilizerness and for transversal non-Clifford gates to classical counting problems, to which the standard tools of additive combinatorics apply.
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.
Magic states enable universal, fault-tolerant quantum computation within the stabilizer framework. Their non-stabilizerness supplies the resource needed to bypass the Eastin-Knill theorem while allowing fault-tolerant distillation. Although many measures of magic exist, not every nonzero-magic state is known to be distillable, and many of currently known distillable states are special cases of Clifford-stabilizer states, defined as pure states uniquely stabilized by finite Clifford subgroups. We develop a general framework for group-covariant functionals on Hermitian operators, introducing the notions of GGG-stabilizer spaces, states, and codes for arbitrary finite subgroups G⊂U(H)G \subset \mathrm{U}(\mathcal{H})G⊂U(H). We define analytic families of GGG-covariant functionals and prove that any GGG-invariant pure state is extremal for a broad class of derived functionals, including symmetric, max-type, and Rényi-type functionals, whenever the underlying family is GGG-covariant. This extremality holds for purity-preserving variations orthogonal to the stabilized subspace. Specializing to the Pauli and Clifford groups, we recover the extremality structure of canonical magic measures such as mana, stabilizer Rényi entropies, generalized Rényi entropies, and stabilizer fidelity, and show that Clifford-stabilizer states extremize them. We classify such states for qubits, qutrits, ququints, and two-qubit systems, identifying new candidates for magic distillation. We further propose an inefficient distillation protocol for a two-qubit magic state with stabilizer fidelity exceeding standard benchmarks, and conjecture that SIC-POVM fiducial states are Clifford-stabilizer states.
The nonstabilizerness of quantum states is a necessary resource for universal quantum computation, yet its characterization is notoriously demanding. Quantifying nonstabilizerness typically requires an exponential number of measurements and a doubly exponential classical post-processing cost to evaluate its standard monotones. In this work, we show that nonstabilizerness is, to a large extent, in the eyes of the beholder: it can be witnessed and quantified using any set of mmm nnn-qubit Pauli measurements, provided the set contains anti-commuting pairs. We introduce a general framework that projects the stabilizer polytope onto the subspace defined by these observables and provide an algorithm that estimates magic from Pauli expectation values with runtime exponential in the number of measurements mmm and polynomial in the number of qubits nnn. By relating the problem to a stabilizer-restricted variant of the quantum marginal problem, we also prove that deciding membership in the corresponding reduced stabilizer polytope is NP-hard. In particular, unless P=NP\mathrm{P} = \mathrm{NP}P=NP, no algorithm polynomial in mmm can solve the problem in full generality, thus establishing fundamental complexity-theoretic limitations. Finally, we employ our framework to compute nonstabilizerness in different Hamiltonian ground states, demonstrating the practical performance of our method in regimes beyond the reach of existing techniques.
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.
The nonstabilizerness of quantum states is a necessary resource for universal quantum computation, yet its characterization is notoriously demanding. Quantifying nonstabilizerness typically requires an exponential number of measurements and a doubly exponential classical post-processing cost to evaluate its standard monotones. In this work, we show that nonstabilizerness is, to a large extent, in the eyes of the beholder: it can be witnessed and quantified using set of m n -qubit Pauli measurements, provided the set contains anti-commuting pairs. We introduce a general framework that projects the stabilizer polytope onto the subspace defined by these observables and provide an algorithm that estimates magic from Pauli expectation values with runtime exponential in the number of measurements m and polynomial in the number of qubits n . By relating the problem to a stabilizer-restricted variant of the quantum marginal problem, we also prove that deciding membership in the corresponding reduced stabilizer polytope is NP-hard. In particular, unless P = NP , no algorithm polynomial in m can solve the problem in full generality, thus establishing fundamental complexity-theoretic limitations. Finally, we employ our framework to compute nonstabilizerness in different Hamiltonian ground states, demonstrating the practical performance of our method in regimes beyond the reach of existing techniques.