We introduce a general formalism to describe the effects of Markovian noise which is spatially correlated, typically decaying over some finite correlation length. For any system of interest, this formalism describes spatial correlations without the necessity to choose a particular microscopic model for the environment. We present a method of mapping the equations to Lindblad form and discuss functional forms for homogeneous spatial correlation functions. We also discuss two example microscopic models for the environment which exhibit nontrivial spatial-temporal correlation functions.

• Received 10 January 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.87.052138