Handbook for Efficiently Quantifying Robustness of Magic

Quantum 8, 1461 (2024).

https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2024-09-05-1461

The nonstabilizerness, or magic, is an essential quantum resource to perform universal quantum computation. Robustness of magic (RoM) in particular characterizes the degree of usefulness of a given quantum state for non-Clifford operation. While the mathematical formalism of RoM can be given in a concise manner, it is extremely challenging to determine the RoM in practice, since it involves superexponentially many pure stabilizer states. In this work, we present efficient novel algorithms to compute the RoM. The crucial technique is a subroutine that achieves the remarkable features in calculation of overlaps between pure stabilizer states: (i) the time complexity per each stabilizer is reduced exponentially, (ii) the space complexity is reduced superexponentially. Based on this subroutine, we present algorithms to compute the RoM for arbitrary states up to $n=7$ qubits on a laptop, while brute-force methods require a memory size of 86 TiB. As a byproduct, the proposed subroutine allows us to simulate the stabilizer fidelity up to $n=8$ qubits, for which naive methods require memory size of 86 PiB so that any state-of-the-art classical computer cannot execute the computation. We further propose novel algorithms that utilize the preknowledge on the structure of target quantum state such as the permutation symmetry of disentanglement, and numerically demonstrate our state-of-the-art results for copies of magic states and partially disentangled quantum states. The series of algorithms constitute a comprehensive “handbook” to scale up the computation of the RoM, and we envision that the proposed technique applies to the computation of other quantum resource measures as well.