English

Measuring magic on a quantum processor

Quantum Physics 2022-12-26 v2

Abstract

Magic states are the resource that allows quantum computers to attain an advantage over classical computers. This resource consists in the deviation from a property called stabilizerness which in turn implies that stabilizer circuits can be efficiently simulated on a classical computer. Without magic, no quantum computer can do anything that a classical computer cannot do. Given the importance of magic for quantum computation, it would be useful to have a method for measuring the amount of magic in a quantum state. In this work, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a protocol for measuring magic based on randomized measurements. Our experiments are carried out on two IBM Quantum Falcon processors. This protocol can provide a characterization of the effectiveness of a quantum hardware in producing states that cannot be effectively simulated on a classical computer. We show how from these measurements one can construct realistic noise models affecting the hardware.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2204.00015,
  title  = {Measuring magic on a quantum processor},
  author = {Salvatore F. E. Oliviero and Lorenzo Leone and Alioscia Hamma and Seth Lloyd},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.00015},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

Salvatore F.E. Oliviero and Lorenzo Leone contributed equally to this paper

R2 v1 2026-06-24T10:33:50.866Z