Robustness of Gauge Digitization to Quantum Noise

Quantum noise limits the use of quantum memory in high energy physics simulations. In particular, it breaks the gauge symmetry of stored quantum states. We examine this effect for abelian and nonabelian theories and demonstrate that optimizing the digitization of gauge theories to quantum memory to account for noise channels can extend the lifetime before complete loss of gauge symmetry by $2-10\times$ over some other digitizations. These constructions also allow for quantum error correction to integrate the symmetries of quantum fields and prioritize the largest gauge violations.