Decoherence-free subspaces for multiple-qubit errors. I. Characterization

Coherence in an open quantum system is degraded through its interaction with a bath. This decoherence can be avoided by restricting the dynamics of the system to special decoherence-free subspaces. These subspaces are usually constructed under the assumption of spatially symmetric system-bath coupling. Here we show that decoherence-free subspaces may appear without spatial symmetry. Instead, we consider a model of system-bath interactions in which to first order only multiple-qubit coupling to the bath is present, with single-qubit system-bath coupling absent. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the appearance of decoherence-free states in this model, and give a number of examples. In a sequel paper we show how to perform universal and fault tolerant quantum computation on the decoherence-free subspaces considered in this paper.