The quantum dynamical map of the spin boson model

Abstract: One of the main frameworks to analyze the effects of the environment in a quantum computer is that of pure dephasing, where the dynamics of qubits can be characterised in terms of a well-known dynamical map. In this work we present a non-peturbative extension of such map beyond this simple pure-dephasing case, i.e. that is valid for a general spin coupled to a bosonic environment in a thermal state. To this aim, we use a Trotter decomposition and a Magnus expansion to simplify the unitary evolution operator in interaction picture. The proposed derivation can be extended to other finite-level open quantum systems including many body, initial system-environment correlated states, multiple-time correlation functions or quantum information protocols.