Stabilizer complexity and the Python's lunch

Abstract

In this note, we study the stabilizer complexity of the reduced density matrix corresponding to one side of a partially entangled thermal (PET) state with fixed energy boundary conditions in a holographic CFT. In particular, we study Wigner negativity, an operationally meaningful magic monotone which can be interpreted as the complexity of classically simulating any quantum circuit preparation of the reduced state on the subregion. Using assumptions on the pseudorandomness of the CFT spectrum and the heavy operator insertion, we observe that the Wigner negativity of the PET state relative to the microcanonical density matrix at the given energy is given by $\exp\left[\frac{1}{8G_N}(A_{\text{out}} - A_{\text{min}})\right]$, where $A_{\text{out}}$ is the area of the outer extremal surface, while $A_{\text{min}}$ is the area of the minimal extremal surface. Thus, the stabilizer complexity of the reduced density matrix on the boundary subregion is $O(1)$ in the absence of a python's lunch, but gets exponentially enhanced in the presence of a python's lunch in the bulk geometry.