Rise and fall of nonstabilizerness via random measurements

Abstract: We investigate the dynamics of nonstabilizerness - also known as `magic' - in monitored quantum circuits composed of random Clifford unitaries and local projective measurements. For measurements in the computational basis, we derive an analytical model for dynamics of the stabilizer nullity, showing that it decays in quantized steps and requires exponentially many measurements to vanish, which reveals the strong protection through Clifford scrambling. On the other hand, for measurements performed in rotated non-Clifford bases, measurements can both create and destroy nonstabilizerness. Here, the dynamics leads to a steady-state with non-trivial nonstabilizerness, independent of the initial state. We find that Haar-random states equilibrate in constant time, whereas stabilizer states exhibit linear-in-size relaxation time. While the stabilizer nullity is insensitive to the rotation angle, Stabilizer R\'enyi Entropies expose a richer structure in their dynamics. Our results uncover sharp distinctions between coarse and fine-grained nonstabilizerness diagnostics and demonstrate how measurements can both suppress and sustain quantum computational resources.