Hierarchical-environment-assisted non-Markovian and its effect on thermodynamic properties

Abstract

We consider a microscopic collision model, i.e., a quantum system interacts with a hierarchical environment consisting of an auxiliary system and a reservoir. We show how the non-Markovian character of the system is influenced by the coupling strength of system-auxiliary system and auxiliary system-reservoir, coherence of environment and initial system-environment correlations. And we study the non-Markovianity induced by coherence of environment from the perspective of energy, further the relationship between information backflow and energy flux is obtained. Then we study the effect of non-Markovianity on thermodynamic properties. By studying the entropy change of system especially that from heat exchanges with the environment, we reveal the essence of entropy change between positive and negative values during non-Markovian evolution is due to the contribution of heat flux induced by coherence. And compared with the case of Markovian dynamics, we observe that the entropy production decreases in some specific time intervals under non-Markovian dynamics induced by the coupling strength. And this is different to the case of non-Markovianity caused by initial system-environment correlation, that we show the possibility of positive entropy production during the whole dynamics.