Subtleties in the pseudomodes formalism for strongly-coupled open quantum systems

The pseudomode method for open quantum systems, also known as the mesoscopic leads approach, consists in replacing a structured environment by a set of auxiliary "pseudomodes" subject to local damping that approximate the environment's spectral density. Determining what parameters and geometry to use for the auxiliary modes, however, is non-trivial and involves many subtleties. In this work we revisit this problem of pseudomode design and investigate some of these subtleties. In particular, we examine the scenario in which pseudomodes couple to each other, resulting in an effective spectral density that is no longer a sum of Lorentzians. We show that non-diagonalizability of the pseudomodes' effective single-particle non-Hermitian Hamiltonian can lead to terms in the effective spectral density which cannot be obtained by diagonalizable non-Hermitian Hamiltonians. Finally, we present a method for constructing the pseudomode parameters to exactly match a fit to a spectral density, and in doing so illuminate the enormous freedom in this process.