English

A little bit of self-correction

Quantum Physics 2025-08-06 v2

Abstract

We investigate the emergence of stable subspaces in the low-temperature quantum thermal dynamics of finite spin chains. Our analysis reveals the existence of effective decoherence-free qudit subspaces, persisting for timescales exponential in β\beta. Surprisingly, the appearance of metastable subspaces is not directly related to the entanglement structure of the ground state(s). Rather, they arise from symmetry relations in low-lying excited states. Despite their stability within a 'phase', practical realization of stable qubits is hindered by susceptibility to symmetry-breaking perturbations. This work highlights that there can be non-trivial quantum behavior in the thermal dynamics of noncommuting many body models, and opens the door to more extensive studies of self-correction in such systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.14970,
  title  = {A little bit of self-correction},
  author = {Michael J. Kastoryano and Lasse B. Kristensen and Chi-Fang Chen and András Gilyén},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.14970},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T18:25:14.130Z