Symmetry-Protected Infinite-Temperature Quantum Memory from Subsystem Codes

We study a mechanism whereby quantum information present in the initial state of a quantum many-body system can be protected for arbitrary times due to a combination of symmetry and spatial locality. Remarkably, the mechanism is sufficiently generic that the dynamics can be fully ergodic upon resolving the protecting symmetry and fixing the encoded quantum state, resulting in a quantum memory that persists up to infinite temperature. After exemplifying the mechanism in a strongly nonintegrable two-dimensional (2D) spin model inspired by the surface code, we find it has a natural interpretation in the language of noiseless subsystems and stabilizer subsystem codes. This interpretation yields a number of further examples, including a nonintegrable Hamiltonian with quantum memory based on the Bacon-Shor code. The lifetime of the encoded quantum information in these models is infinite provided that the dynamics respect the stabilizer symmetry of the underlying subsystem code. In the presence of symmetry-violating perturbations, we make contact with previous work leveraging the concept of prethermalization to show that the encoded quantum information can acquire a parametrically long lifetime under dynamics with an enlarged continuous symmetry group. The prethermalization mechanism hinges on the application of external fields that are much larger than the perturbations themselves. We identify conditions on the underlying subsystem code that enable such a prethermal enhancement of the memory lifetime.