We introduce a novel measure for the quantum property of “nonstabilizerness”—commonly known as “magic”—by considering the Rényi entropy of the probability distribution associated to a pure quantum state given by the square of the expectation value of Pauli strings in that state. We show that this is a good measure of nonstabilizerness from the point of view of resource theory and show bounds with other known measures. The stabilizer Rényi entropy has the advantage of being easily computable because it does not need a minimization procedure. We present a protocol for an experimental measurement by randomized measurements. We show that the nonstabilizerness is intimately connected to out-of-time-order correlation functions and that maximal levels of nonstabilizerness are necessary for quantum chaos.

• Received 1 July 2021
• Revised 4 October 2021
• Accepted 11 January 2022

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.050402