Dissipative self-interference and robustness of continuous error-correction to miscalibration

We derive an effective equation of motion within the steady-state subspace of a large family of Markovian open systems (i.e., Lindbladians) subject to perturbations of their Hamiltonians and system-bath couplings [1]. We derive a set of conditions under which competing dissipative processes destructively interfere, producing no dissipation within the steady-state subspace. Due to the mildness of the conditions, such destructive interference turns out to be much more generic than expected. For quantum error-correction, these effects imply that continuously error-correcting Lindbladians are robust to calibration errors, including miscalibrations consisting of operators undetectable by the code. A similar interference is present in more general systems if one implements a particular Hamiltonian drive, resulting in a coherent cancellation of dissipation. On the opposite extreme, instead of suppressing dissipation, we provide a simple implementation of universal Lindbladian simulation.

[1] V. V. Albert, K. Noh, and F. Reiter, (2018), arXiv:1809.07324