It was shown recently [D.A. Lidar et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 2594 (1998)]
that within the framework of the semigroup Markovian master equation,
decoherence-free (DF) subspaces exist which are stable to first order in time
to a perturbation. Here this result is extended to the non-Markovian regime and
generalized. In particular, it is shown that within both the semigroup and the
non-Markovian operator sum representation, DF subspaces are stable to all
orders in time to a symmetry-breaking perturbation. DF subspaces are thus ideal
for quantum memory applications. For quantum computation, however, the
stability result does not extend beyond the first order. Thus, to perform
robust quantum computation in DF subspaces, they must be supplemented with
quantum error correcting codes.Comment: 16 pages, no figures. Several changes, including a clarification of
the derivation of the Lindblad equation from the operator sum representation.
To appear in Phys. Rev