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arXiv:2609.16935

Nonlocal Magic across the Many-Body Localization Crossover

Shan-Zhong Li, Zhi Li

cond-mat.dis-nnquant-phSubmitted Sep 15, 2026• Announced Sep 16, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Nonlocal magic quantifies the minimum nonstabilizerness attainable under independent local unitary transformations on the two subsystems. Here, we use min-relative nonlocal magic (NLM) to characterize the crossover from ergodicity to many-body localization (MBL) in the random-field XXZ chain. Unlike entanglement entropy, NLM probes how entanglement is organized through the distance of the Schmidt spectrum from dyadic-flat stabilizer spectra. From weak to intermediate disorder, NLM evolves from an $O(1)$ Haar-like value into a size-enhanced dome, while entanglement remains volume-law, revealing a spectral reorganization not visible in the entropy. Deep in the MBL regime, a two-level cut-hybridization model captures the nearly binary Schmidt spectrum and explains why the mean and median NLM decay approximately as $W^{-1}$ and $W^{-2}$, respectively. Following a product-state quench, NLM overshoots and relaxes in the ergodic regime, whereas at strong disorder it grows slowly and approximately logarithmically. These results show that NLM resolves Schmidt-spectrum structure not visible in the entanglement entropy and provides a complementary probe of ergodicity breaking.

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6+9.5 pages,5+4 figures

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Nonlocal nonstabilizerness quantifies the irreducible magic resource encoded in bipartite entanglement, but its evaluation is generally hindered by a highly nonconvex optimization over local unitary transformations. Here we propose a Schmidt-reference-state framework that replaces this optimization by a direct construction from the sorted Schmidt spectrum. We conjecture that the nonlocal stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE) is given by the SRE of the corresponding reference state, and support this conjecture through analytical and numerical evidences. Our framework makes nonlocal nonstabilizerness efficiently accessible for weakly entangled many-body states whenever the entanglement spectrum is available. Applying it to Haar-random states, critical spin chains, and PXP dynamics, we show that nonlocal SRE captures nonstabilizer structures in the entanglement spectrum that are invisible to conventional entanglement measures. Our results establish entanglement spectra as a powerful window into irreducible nonstabilizer correlations, opening a broadly applicable route to studying nonlocal magic resources of quantum many-body systems in and out of equilibrium.
Magic, or nonstabilizerness, is the resource that promotes stabilizer operations to universal quantum computation. For bipartite pure states, its component intrinsic to the correlations between the subsystems, the nonlocal magic, is obtained by minimizing a magic measure over local unitaries. For the stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE), the minimum is conjectured to be attained by the computational-basis (CB) representative, the state obtained by assigning the Schmidt coefficients in decreasing order to matching computational-basis labels. We prove this conjecture for two families of states at every system size and bipartition: states with dyadic-staircase Schmidt spectra and states of Schmidt rank at most six. For arbitrary bipartite pure states, we show that the CB value exceeds the nonlocal SRE by at most 444, fixing the leading term of any divergent scaling of nonlocal SRE. We further show that the nonlocal SRE grows at most logarithmically with the entanglement entropy. Consequently, one-dimensional area-law states have bounded nonlocal SRE, while critical states with logarithmic entanglement entropy permit at most doubly logarithmic growth with system size. We apply these results to the transverse-field Ising chain, where we tightly bound the nonlocal SRE in the gapped phases and identify its double-logarithmic growth at criticality.
Nonergodic features of chaotic quantum many-body systems are commonly characterized through local observables, fidelity, and entanglement entropy. Here, using global and nonlocal measures of nonstabilizerness (magic), we study quantum many-body scars near infinite temperature in (1+1)(1+1)(1+1)-dimensional Abelian Z2\mathbb{Z}_2Z2​ and U(1)(1)(1) lattice gauge theories, both analytically and numerically. We derive an exact closed-form expression for the nonlocal trace distance magic solely from the Schmidt spectrum, reducing the optimization over local unitaries to a finite maximization over stabilizer-compatible Schmidt ranks. We find that scar eigenstates can exhibit extensive global magic despite their anomalously low entanglement, while retaining anomalously large nonlocal magic compared with ergodic states. We further show that constrained Hilbert spaces can generate irreducible nonlocal magic through stabilizer-incompatible Schmidt ranks, even for a flat entanglement spectrum.
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Magic, or nonstabilizerness, is the resource that lifts Clifford circuits to universal quantum computation and has become a standard diagnostic of many-body states. For a state shared between two parties, however, a basic question has remained open: how much of the magic resides in the correlations between the parties rather than in their local bases? Isolating this nonlocal magic requires minimizing over all local bases, an optimization that has so far resisted exact solution. Here we solve it for the stabilizer fidelity: the nonlocal magic of every pure multiqubit state is the distance of its entanglement spectrum from the closest spectrum of Bell pairs. The same quantity governs an apparently unrelated task: a family of states universally embezzles entanglement under local operations and classical communication if and only if its nonlocal magic diverges. The deciding property is not the amount of entanglement but the way the entanglement spectrum spreads its weight across factor-of-two windows of rank, so that critical chains and random-singlet states, with identical logarithmic entanglement scaling, carry unbounded and vanishing nonlocal magic, respectively. Nonlocal magic thereby becomes an operationally meaningful property of quantum correlations, directly accessible to tensor-network simulations and, through entanglement spectroscopy, to experiments.
Nonstabilizerness, also known as "magic," quantifies the deviation of quantum states from stabilizer states, capturing the complexity necessary for quantum computational advantage. In this Letter, we investigate the dynamics of nonstabilizerness in disordered many-body localized (MBL) systems using the stabilizer Rényi entropy (SRE). Leveraging a phenomenological description based on the ℓ-bit model, we analytically and numerically demonstrate that interactions profoundly influence nonstabilizerness spreading, inducing a power-law growth of SRE that markedly contrasts with the rapid saturation observed in ergodic systems. We validate our theoretical predictions through numerical simulations of the disordered transverse-field Ising model, showing excellent agreement across various disorder strengths, system sizes, and initial states. Additionally, we uncover a universal relationship between SRE and entanglement entropy, revealing their common scaling in the MBL regime independent of disorder strength and system size. Our results offer critical insights into the interplay of disorder, interactions, and complexity in quantum many-body systems.