Unravelling the non-Markovian spin-boson model and quantum quasi-Otto cycle

Abstract

We use the spin-boson model to describe the dynamics of a two-level atom interacting with Fabry-P\'erot cavity modes. We solve the Schr\"odinger equation for the system-bath model without the Born-Markov approximation to derive the non-Markovian reduced dynamics of the qubit. We further construct an exact Lindblad-type master equation for it. Similar to the quantum Otto cycle, we construct a non- Markovian quasi-cyclic process based on the atom-cavity interactions, which we call the quasi-Otto cycle. For judicious choices of input state and parameters, the quasi-cycle can be more efficient as a quantum engine than the Otto cycle. We also showed that if the quasi-cycle is repeated multiple times, the efficiency of the quasi-Otto engine asymptotically approaches that of the Otto engine.