Experimental demonstration of non-local magic in a superconducting quantum processor

Abstract: Magic is a non-classical resource whose efficient manipulation is fundamental to advancing efficient and scalable fault-tolerant quantum computing. Quantum advantage is possible only if both magic and entanglement are present. Of particular interest is non-local magic- the fraction of the resource that cannot be distilled (or erased) by local unitary operations - which is a necessary feature for quantum complex behavior. We perform the first experimental demonstration of non-local magic in a superconducting Quantum Processing Unit (QPU). Direct access to the QPU device enables us to identify and characterize the dominant noise mechanisms intrinsic to the quantum hardware. We observe excellent agreement between theory and experiment without the need for any free parameter in the noise modeling of our system and shows the experimental capability of harnessing both local and non-local magic resources separately, thereby offering a promising path towards more reliable pre-fault-tolerant quantum devices and to advance hardware-aware research in quantum information in the near term. Finally, the methods and tools developed in this work are conducive to the experimental realization of efficient purity estimation (featuring exponential speedup) and the decoding of Hawking radiation from a toy-model of a Black Hole.