We develop a structure theory for decoherence-free subspaces and noiseless subsystems that applies to arbitrary (not necessarily unital) quantum operations. The theory can be alternatively phrased in terms of the superoperator perspective, or the algebraic noise commutant formalism. As an application, we propose a method for finding all such subspaces and subsystems for arbitrary quantum operations. We suggest that this work brings the fundamental passive technique for error correction in quantum computing an important step closer to practical realization.

• Received 20 July 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.050501