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arXiv:2508.08378

Emergence of distinct relaxation behaviour and Quantum Regression Theorem in the Ultra-strong Coupling Limit

Sakil Khan, Bijay Kumar Agarwalla

Published Aug 11, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

In the framework of open quantum systems, we derive the dynamical equation governing two-time correlation functions in the ultra-strong coupling (USC) regime between the system and its environment. Unlike the case of the standard weak-coupling regime, in the USC case, we find distinct relaxation behavior for two-time correlators depending on the types of the operators involved in the correlation function. Interestingly, the Quantum Regression Theorem (QRT) emerges after the fastest relaxation time-scale, which is governed by the system-bath coupling strength. We exemplify our findings for the dissipative spin-boson model and further find excellent agreement with the numerically exact hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) method.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2508.08378

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In the framework of open quantum systems, we derive the dynamical equation governing two-time correlation functions in the ultra-strong coupling (USC) regime between the system and its environment. Unlike the case of the standard weak-coupling regime, in the USC case, we find distinct relaxation behavior for two-time correlators depending on the types of the operators involved in the correlation function. Interestingly, the Quantum Regression Theorem (QRT) emerges after the fastest relaxation time-scale, which is governed by the system-bath coupling strength. We exemplify our findings for the dissipative spin-boson model and further find excellent agreement with the numerically exact hierarchical equations of motion (HEOM) method.
An extremely useful evolution equation that allows systematically calculating the two-time correlation functions (CF's) of system operators for non-Markovian open (dissipative) quantum systems is derived. The derivation is based on perturbative quantum master equation approach, so non-Markovian open quantum system models that are not exactly solvable can use our derived evolution equation to easily obtain their two-time CF's of system operators, valid to second order in the system-environment interaction. Since the form and nature of the Hamiltonian are not specified in our derived evolution equation, our evolution equation is applicable for bosonic and/or fermionic environments and can be applied to a wide range of system-environment models with any factorized (separable) system-environment initial states (pure or mixed). When applied to a general model of a system coupled to a finite-temperature bosonic environment with a system coupling operator L in the system-environment interaction Hamiltonian, the resultant evolution equation is valid for both L = L(†) and L ≠ L(†) cases, in contrast to those evolution equations valid only for L = L(†) case in the literature. The derived equation that generalizes the quantum regression theorem (QRT) to the non-Markovian case will have broad applications in many different branches of physics. We then give conditions on which the QRT holds in the weak system-environment coupling case and apply the derived evolution equation to a problem of a two-level system (atom) coupled to the finite-temperature bosonic environment (electromagnetic fields) with L ≠ L(†).
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Abstract We show that the long-time limit of the two-point correlation function obtained via the standard quantum regression theorem (QRT), a standard tool to compute correlation functions in open quantum systems, does not respect the Kubo–Martin–Schwinger equilibrium condition to the non-zero order of the system-bath coupling. We then follow the recently developed Heisenberg operator method for open quantum systems and by applying a ‘weak’ Markov approximation, derive a new modified version of the QRT that not only respects the KMS condition but further predicts exact answers for certain paradigmatic models in specific limits. We also show that in cases where the modified QRT does not match with exact answers, it always performs better than the standard QRT.
We investigate the presence of memory in the sequential measurement statistics of an open quantum system, as witnessed by the departure from the quantum regression theorem (QRT), that is, the possibility to predict multitime probabilities from the one-time reduced dynamical map. For factorized initial states, we identify an exact decomposition of the two-time propagator into a QRT-like contribution, fully determined by the reduced dynamical map, and a memory term encoding system--environment correlations across the intervention; in the weak-coupling regime, the memory term yields an explicit second-order correction expressed in terms of the reduced map and bath correlation functions. Furthermore, we introduce an operational quantifier of QRT violations based on the distance between exact and QRT-predicted joint probabilities. Benchmarking the framework on a spin--boson model and using a pseudomode embedding as nonperturbative reference, we comprehensively analyze the impact of spectral-density parameters, environmental temperature, and measurement protocols on the non-Markovianity of the multitime statistics. Comparison with a one-time quantifier shows that reduced-state non-Markovianity and multitime memory are related but inequivalent: the latter, as probed through sequential statistics, is intrinsically protocol dependent and can become visible at higher temporal order even when two-time statistics remain compatible with QRT predictions.
The quantum regression theorem is one of the central results in open quantum systems and is extensively used for computing multi-point correlation functions. Traditionally it is derived for two-time correlators in the Markovian limit employing the Schr\"odinger picture. In this paper we make use of the Heisenberg picture to derive the quantum regression theorems for multi-time correlation functions, which in the special limit reduce to the well-known two-time regression theorem. For the multi-time correlation function we find that the regression theorem takes the same form as it takes for the two-time correlation function with a mild restriction that one of the times should be greater than all other time variables. Interestingly, the Heisenberg picture also allows us to derive an analog of regression theorem for out-of-time-ordered correlators. We further extend our study for the case of non-Markovian dynamics and report the modifications to the standard quantum regression theorem. We illustrate all of the above results using the paradigmatic dissipative spin-boson model.
We extend a standard stochastic theory to study open quantum systems coupled to a generic quantum environment. We exemplify the general framework by studying a two-level quantum system coupled bilinearly to the three fundamental classes of non-interacting particles: bosons, fermions, and spins. In this unified stochastic approach, the generalized stochastic Liouville equation (SLE) formally captures the exact quantum dissipations when noise variables with appropriate statistics for different bath models are applied. Anharmonic effects of a non-Gaussian bath are precisely encoded in the bath multi-time correlation functions that noise variables have to satisfy. Starting from the SLE, we devise a family of generalized hierarchical equations by averaging out the noise variables and expand bath multi-time correlation functions in a complete basis of orthonormal functions. The general hierarchical equations constitute systems of linear equations that provide numerically exact simulations of quantum dynamics. For bosonic bath models, our general hierarchical equation of motion reduces exactly to an extended version of hierarchical equation of motion which allows efficient simulation for arbitrary spectral densities and temperature regimes. Similar efficiency and flexibility can be achieved for the fermionic bath models within our formalism. The spin bath models can be simulated with two complementary approaches in the present formalism. (I) They can be viewed as an example of non-Gaussian bath models and be directly handled with the general hierarchical equation approach given their multi-time correlation functions. (II) Alternatively, each bath spin can be first mapped onto a pair of fermions and be treated as fermionic environments within the present formalism.