We derive quasiclassical (approximately factorizable) trajectories for the spin-boson Hamiltonian without the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) and show how they may be used to calculate the evolution of the fully quantized system when the initial state of the oscillator (boson field) is a coherent state with sufficiently large amplitude. We give a general prescription to obtain such trajectories for other systems. We study how well-known features of the model in the RWA are modified by the counterrotating terms and explore some of the new phenomenology introduced by these terms.
We propose a method for obtaining effective classical Hamiltonians \cal H for many-body quantum spin systems with large spins. This method uses the coherent-state representation of the partition function Z and the cumulant expansion in powers of 1/S. For the quantum Hamiltonian \hat H of a Heisenberg form, the 1/S corrections in \cal H have a non-Heisenberg many-spin form. The effective Hamiltonian \cal H can be treated by methods familiar for classical systems. The non-Heisenberg terms in \cal H may be responsible for such effects as spin-Peierls transition and uplifting of the classical degeneracy by quantum fluctuations.