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Maximal Magic for Two-qubit States

Quantum Physics 2026-01-14 v3 Statistical Mechanics High Energy Physics - Phenomenology High Energy Physics - Theory Nuclear Theory

Abstract

Magic is a quantum resource essential for universal quantum computation and represents the deviation of quantum states from those that can be simulated efficiently using classical algorithms. Using the Stabilizer R\'enyi Entropy (SRE), we investigate two-qubit states with maximal magic, which are most distinct from classical simulability, and provide strong numerical evidence that the maximal second order SRE is ln(16/7)0.827\ln (16/7)\approx 0.827, establishing a tighter bound than the prior ln(5/2)0.916\ln (5/2)\approx 0.916. We identify 480 states saturating the new bound, which turn out to be the fiducial states for the mutually unbiased bases (MUBs) generated by the orbits of the Weyl-Heisenberg (WH) group, and conjecture that WH-MUBs are the maximal magic states for nn-qubit, when n1n\neq 1 and 3. We also reveal a striking interplay between magic and entanglement: the entanglement of maximal magic states is restricted to two possible values, 1/21/2 and 1/21/\sqrt{2}, as quantified by the concurrence; none is maximally entangled.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2502.17550,
  title  = {Maximal Magic for Two-qubit States},
  author = {Qiaofeng Liu and Ian Low and Zhewei Yin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.17550},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages, 1 figure; published version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T21:56:08.112Z