Anatoly Yu Smirnov, et al. 

We develop a theory to describe dynamics of a non-stationary open quantum system interacting with a hybrid environment, which includes high-frequency and low-frequency noise components. One part of the system–bath interaction is treated in a perturbative manner, whereas the other part is considered exactly. This approach allows us to derive a set of master equations where the relaxation rates are expressed as convolutions of the Bloch–Redfield and Marcus formulas. Our theory enables analysis of systems that have extremely small energy gaps in the presence of a realistic environment. As an illustration, we apply the theory to the 16 qubit quantum annealing problem with dangling qubits (Dickson et al 2013 Nat. Commun. 4 1903) and show qualitative agreement with experimental results.