Effects of the rotating-wave and secular approximations on non-Markovianity

Abstract

We study the effect of the rotating-wave approximation (RWA) and the secular approximation (SA) on the non-Markovian behavior in the spin-boson model at zero temperature. We find that both the RWA and SA lead to a dramatic reduction in the observed non-Markovianity. In general, non-Markovian dynamics is observed for the whole relaxation time of the system, whereas the RWA and SA lead to such dynamics only on the short time scale of the environmental correlation time. Thus, the RWA and SA are not necessarily justified in the studies of non-Markovianity, although they can estimate the state of the system precisely. Furthermore, we derive an accurate analytical expression for the non-Markovianity measure without the RWA or SA. This expression yields important insight into the physics of the problem.