Non-Markovian effects on the steady state properties of a damped harmonic oscillator

Abstract We analyze the steady-state characteristics of a damped harmonic oscillator (system) in the presence of a non-Markovian bath characterized by Lorentzian spectral density. Although Markovian baths presume memoryless dynamics, the introduction of complex temporal connections by a non-Markovian environment radically modifies the dynamics of the system and its steady-state behaviour. We obtain the steady-state Green’s function and correlation functions of the system using the Schwinger–Keldysh formalism. In both rotating and non-rotating wave approximation, we analyzed various emergent properties like effective temperature and distribution function. We also explore the impact of dissipation and non-Markovian bath on the quantum Zeno and anti-Zeno effects. We show that a transition between Zeno to anti-Zeno effect can be tuned by bath spectral width and the strength of dissipation.