Quantifying Nonstabilizerness of Quantum Codes by Removing the Inert Background

Abstract

Nonstabilizerness (magic) is the quantum resource that, together with stabilizer operations, makes universal quantum computation possible. It appears in fault-tolerant codes and topological order. However, quantifying nonstabilizerness is difficult. The standard measure sums over exponentially many Pauli operators, and for quantum codes no quantitative theory has been available. We resolve this by a structural observation: the Clifford sector carries no magic and can be removed by a Clifford transformation, leaving an order-three object whose magic is an exactly evaluable fourth moment. Removing this inert background yields closed forms for several code families: a formula for all Dicke states, reducing a 100-qubit case from $4^{100}$ terms to a short binomial sum; a bound for cubic-phase codes (twisted quantum doubles and non-Abelian topological order), saturated only by the $D_4$ code; and a cyclic/zero criterion for group multiplication states. Together these results reduce the computation of nonstabilizerness for a broad class of codes to finite classical counting problems, and identify the maximally magical codes among them.