Topological magic response in quantum spin chains
Abstract
Topological matter provides natural platforms for robust, non-local information storage, central to quantum error correction. Yet, while the relation between entanglement and topology is well established, little is known about the role of nonstabilizerness (or magic), a pivotal concept in fault-tolerant quantum computation, in topological phases. We introduce the concept of topological magic response, the ability of a state to spread over stabilizer space when perturbed by finite-depth non-Clifford circuits. Unlike a topological invariant or order parameter, this response function probes how a phase reacts to non-Clifford perturbations, revealing the presence of non-local quantum correlations. In Ising-type spin chains, we show that symmetry-broken and paramagnetic phases lack such a response, whereas symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases always display it. To capture this, we utilize a combination of stabilizer R\'{e}nyi entropies that, in analogy with topological entanglement entropy, isolates non-locally stored information. Using exact analytic computations and matrix product states simulations based on an algorithmic technique we introduce, we show that SPT phases doped with gates support robust topological magic response, while trivial phases remain featureless.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2512.16673,
title = {Topological magic response in quantum spin chains},
author = {Ritu Nehra and Poetri Sonya Tarabunga and Martina Frau and Mario Collura and Emanuele Tirrito and Marcello Dalmonte},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.16673},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
19 pages, 12 figures