Power-law tails and non-Markovian dynamics in open quantum systems: An exact solution from Keldysh field theory

Abstract

The Born-Markov approximation is widely used to study dynamics of open quantum systems coupled to external baths. Using Keldysh formalism, we show that the dynamics of a system of bosons (fermions) linearly coupled to non-interacting bosonic (fermionic) bath falls outside this paradigm if the bath spectral function has non-analyticities as a function of frequency. In this case, we show that the dissipative and noise kernels governing the dynamics have distinct power law tails. The Green's functions show a short time "quasi" Markovian exponential decay before crossing over to a power law tail governed by the non-analyticity of the spectral function. We study a system of bosons (fermions) hopping on a one dimensional lattice, where each site is coupled linearly to an independent bath of non-interacting bosons (fermions). We obtain exact expressions for the Green's functions of this system which show power law decay $\sim |t-t'|^{-3/2}$. We use these to calculate density and current profile, as well as unequal time current-current correlators. While the density and current profiles show interesting quantitative deviations from Markovian results, the current-current correlators show qualitatively distinct long time power law tails $|t-t'|^{-3}$ characteristic of non-Markovian dynamics. We show that the power law decays survive in presence of inter-particle interaction in the system, but the cross-over time scale is shifted to larger values with increasing interaction strength.