Decodable hybrid dynamics of open quantum systems with Z_2 symmetry

Abstract: We explore a class of "open" quantum circuit models with local decoherence ("noise") and local projective measurements, each respecting a global Z_2 symmetry. The model supports a spin glass phase where the Z_2 symmetry is spontaneously broken (not possible in an equilibrium 1d system), a paramagnetic phase characterized by a divergent susceptibility, and an intermediate "trivial" phase. All three phases are also stable to Z_2-symmetric local unitary gates, and the dynamical phase transitions between the phases are in the percolation universality class. The open circuit dynamics can be purified by explicitly introducing a bath with its own "scrambling" dynamics, as in [Bao, Choi, Altman, arXiv:2102.09164], which does not change any of the universal physics. Within the spin glass phase the circuit dynamics can be interpreted as a quantum repetition code, with each stabilizer of the code measured stochastically at a finite rate, and the decoherences as effective bit-flip errors. Motivated by the geometry of the spin glass phase, we devise a novel decoding algorithm for recovering an arbitrary initial qubit state in the code space, assuming knowledge of the history of the measurement outcomes, and the ability of performing local Pauli measurements and gates on the final state. For a circuit with L^d qubits running for time T, the time needed to execute the decoder scales as O(L^d T) (with dimensionality d). With this decoder in hand, we find that the information of the initial encoded qubit state can be retained (and then recovered) for a time logarithmic in L for a 1d circuit, and for a time at least linear in L in 2d below a finite error threshold. For both the repetition and toric codes, we compare and contrast our decoding algorithm with earlier algorithms that map the error model to the random bond Ising model.