Making Non-Markovian master equations accessible with approximate environments

Abstract: Accurate and efficient simulation of open quantum systems remains a significant challenge, particularly for Non-Markovian dynamics. We demonstrate the profound utility of expressing the environmental correlation function as a sum of damped sinusoidals within master equations. While not strictly required, this decomposition offers substantial benefits, crucially reducing the cost of Lamb-shift and decay rates calculations without sacrificing accuracy. Furthermore, this approach enables straightforward calculation of Lamb-shift corrections, bypassing the need for complex principal value integration. We show that these Lamb-shift effects are demonstrably non-negligible in heat transport scenarios, and are needed for an accurate description. Unlike in the Gorini-Kossakowski-Lindblad-Sudarshan(GKLS) master equation, the non-commuting nature of the Lamb-shift with the Hamiltonian in non-Markovian descriptions, coupled with GKLS's inaccuracies at early times, brings the necessity of Non-Markovian descriptions for finite-time thermodynamics. In the weak coupling regime, our Master Equation formulations with exponential decomposition achieve accuracy comparable to numerically exact methods. This methodology significantly simplifies and accelerates the simulation of non-Markovian dynamics in open quantum systems, offering a more reliable and computationally tractable alternative akin to a Global Master Equation.