2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/134657We consider qubits in a linear arrangement coupled to a bosonic field which acts as a quantum heat bath and causes decoherence. By taking the spatial separation of the qubits explicitly into account, the reduced qubit dynamics acquires an additional non-Markovian element. We investigate the time evolution of an entangled many-qubit W state, which for vanishing qubit separation remains robust under pure dephasing. For finite separation, by contrast, the dynamics is no longer decoherence-free. On the other hand, spatial noise correlations may prevent a complete dephasing. While a standard Bloch-Redfield master equation fails to describe this behavior even qualitatively, we propose instead a widely applicable causal master equation. Here we employ it to identify and characterize decoherence-poor subspaces. Consequences for quantum error correction are discussed.14 pages, 6 figures, revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev. BMesoscale and Nanoscale PhysicsQuantum PhysicsIncomplete pure dephasing of N-qubit entangled W statestext