Non-Markovian effects in electronic and spin transport

Abstract: We derive a non-Markovian master equation for the evolution of a class of open quantum systems consisting of quadratic fermionic models coupled to wide-band reservoirs. This is done by providing an explicit correspondence between master equations and non-equilibrium Green's functions approaches. Our findings permit to study non-Markovian regimes characterized by negative decoherence rates. We study the real-time dynamics and the steady-state solution of two illustrative models: a tight-binding and an XY-spin chains. The rich set of phases encountered for the non-equilibrium XY model extends previous studies to the non-Markovian regime.