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We apply the hierarchical equations of motion technique to analyzing nonequilibrium heat transport in a spin-boson type model, whereby heat transfer through a central spin is mediated by an intermediate pair of coupled harmonic oscillators. The coupling between each pair of oscillators is shown to introduce a localized gap into the effective spectral densities characterizing the system–oscillator–reservoir interactions. Compared to the case of a single mediating oscillator, we find the heat current to be drastically modified at weak system-bath coupling. In particular, a second-order treatment fails to capture the correct steady-state behavior in this regime, which stems from the λ 4 -scaling of the energy transfer rate to lowest order in the coupling strength λ . This leads naturally to a strong suppression in the steady-state current in the asymptotically weak coupling limit. On the other hand, the current noise follows the same scaling as in the single oscillator case in accordance with the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Additionally, we find the heat current to be consistent with Fourier’s law even at large temperature bias. Our analysis highlights a novel mechanism for controlling heat transport in nanoscale systems based on tailoring the spectral properties of thermal environments.

A bstract We study families of dynamical maps generated from interactions with varying degrees of symmetry. For a family of time-independent Hamiltonians, we demonstrate the relationship between symmetry, strong-coupling, perfect entanglers, non-Markovian features, and non-time-locality. We show that by perturbing the initial environment state, effective time-local descriptions can be obtained that are non-singular yet capture essential non-unitary features of the reduced dynamics. We then consider a time-dependent Hamiltonian that changes the degree of symmetry by activating a dormant degree of freedom. In this example we find that the one-qubit reduced dynamics changes dramatically. These results can inform the construction of effective theories of open systems when the larger system dynamics is unknown.