Perturbative expansions for the fidelities and spatially correlated dissipation of quantum bits

We construct generally applicable short-time perturbative expansions for some fidelities, such as the input-output fidelity, the entanglement fidelity, and the average fidelity. Successive terms of these expansions yield characteristic times for the damping of the fidelities involving successive powers of the Hamiltonian. The second-order results, which represent the damping rates of the fidelities, are extensively discussed. As an interesting application of these expansions, we use them to study spatially correlated dissipation of quantum bits. Spatial correlations in the dissipation are described by a correlation function. Explicit conditions are derived for independent decoherence and for collective decoherence.