  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.
