Asymptotic entanglement in circle stabilizer states and states forbidding arbitrary vertex-minors

Abstract

Stabilizer states play a central role in quantum information theory, and understanding their entanglement has motivated a large body of work. A well-studied question in particular is when a stabilizer state $|ψ\rangle$ can be transformed into another stabilizer state $|ϕ\rangle$ using only single-qubit Clifford operations and Pauli measurements. If this is possible, we say that $|ϕ\rangle$ is a vertex-minor of $|ψ\rangle$. Assuming Geelen's weak structural conjecture on vertex-minors, we establish the following general statement. For any fixed stabilizer state $|ϕ\rangle$, the entanglement in stabilizer states $|ψ\rangle$ that do not contain $|ϕ\rangle$ as a vertex-minor is asymptotically constrained. More concretely, we show that the distance of any sufficiently rank-connected $|ψ\rangle$ not containing $|ϕ\rangle$ as a vertex-minor grows as $O(\log n)$, and prove similar results for the so-called locally accessible information, a quantity that captures the amount of information that can be learned through single-qubit Pauli measurements. Our results rely on (i) connecting the above two entanglement measures to rank functions of multimatroids, (ii) connecting the rank functions of circle stabilizer states to rank functions on $4$-regular multigraphs, which asymptotically constrains the entanglement of circle stabilizer states, and (iii) using Geelen's weak structural conjecture on vertex-minors to `lift' the previous result to sufficiently connected states in proper vertex-minor-closed families of stabilizer states. Our results establish a connection between asymptotic stabilizer entanglement and forbidden vertex-minors, with direct implications for the entanglement that can be generated in quantum devices.