Gauge protection in non-abelian lattice gauge theories

Abstract Protection of gauge invariance in experimental realizations lattice theories based on energy-penalty schemes has recently stimulated impressive efforts both theoretically and setups quantum synthetic matter. A major challenge is the reliability such non-abelian where local conservation laws do not commute. Here, we show through exact diagonalization (ED) that can be reliably controlled using gauge-protection terms energetically stabilize target sector Hilbert space, suppressing violations due to unitary gauge-breaking errors. We present analytic arguments predict a volume-independent protection strength V , which when sufficiently large leads emergence an adjusted theory with same symmetry up least timescale ? V / 0 3 . Thereafter, renormalized dominates ?exp( / 0 )/ energy factor, similar case faulty abelian theories. Moreover, for certain experimentally relevant errors single-body robustly suppress all accessible evolution times ED, demonstrate emerges this as well. These readily implemented fewer engineering requirements than ideal itself current ultracold-atom noisy intermediate-scale (NISQ) devices.