We present a unified description of heat flow in two-terminal hybrid quantum systems. Using simple models, we analytically study nonlinear aspects of heat transfer between various reservoirs: metals, solids, and spin baths, mediated by the excitation/relaxation of a central (subsystem) mode. We demonstrate rich nonlinear current-temperature characteristics, originating from either the molecular anharmonicity, or the reservoirs (complex) energy spectra. In particular, we establish sufficient conditions for thermal rectification in two-terminal junctions. We identify two classes of rectifiers. In type-A rectifiers the density of states of the reservoirs are dissimilar. In type-B rectifiers the baths are identical, but include particles whose statistics differ from that of the subsystem, to which they asymmetrically couple. Nonlinear heat flow, and specifically thermal rectification, are thus ubiquitous effects that could be observed in a variety of systems, phononic, electronic, and photonic.

We demonstrate an exact mapping of a class of models of two interacting qubits in thermal reservoirs to two separate problems of spin-bosontype systems. Based on this mapping, exact numerical simulations of the qubits dynamics can be performed, beyond the weak system-bath coupling limit and the Markovian approximation. Given the time evolution of the system population and coherences, we study as an application the dynamics of entanglement between the pair of qubits immersed in boson thermal baths, showing a rich phenomenology, including an intermediate oscillatory behavior, the entanglement sudden birth, sudden death and revival. We find that the occurrence of entanglement sudden death in this model depends on the portion of the zero and double excitation states in the subsystem initial state. In the longtime limit, analytic expressions are presented at weak system-bath coupling, for a range of relevant qubit parameters.

Quantum energy transfer in a chain of two-level (spin) units, connected at its ends to two thermal reservoirs, is analyzed in two limits: (i) In the off-resonance regime, when the characteristic subsystem excitation energy gaps are larger than the reservoirs frequencies, or the baths temperatures are low. (ii) In the resonance regime, when the chain excitation gaps match populated bath modes. In the latter case the model is studied using a master equation approach, showing that the dynamics is ballistic for the particular chain model explored. In the former case we analytically study the system dynamics utilizing the recently developed Energy-Transfer Born-Oppenheimer formalism [Phys. Rev. E 83, 051114 (2011)], demonstrating that energy transfers across the chain in a superexchange (bridge assisted tunneling) mechanism, with the energy current decreasing exponentially with distance. This behavior is insensitive to the chain details. Since at low temperatures the excitation spectrum of molecular systems can be truncated to resemble a spin chain model, we argue that the superexchange behavior obtained here should be observed in widespread systems satisfying the off-resonance condition.

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