Absolutely Stable Spatiotemporal Order in Noisy Quantum Systems.

Abstract

We introduce a model of nonunitary quantum dynamics that exhibits infinitely long-lived discrete spatiotemporal order robust against any unitary or dissipative perturbation. Ergodicity is evaded by combining a sequence of projective measurements with a local feedback rule that is inspired by Toom's "north-east-center" classical cellular automaton. The measurements in question only partially collapse the wave function of the system, allowing some quantum coherence to persist. We demonstrate our claims using numerical simulations of a Clifford circuit in two spatial dimensions which allows access to large system sizes, and also present results for more generic dynamics on modest system sizes. We also devise explicit experimental protocols realizing this dynamics using one- and two-qubit gates that are available on present-day quantum computing platforms.