Analytic representations of bath correlation functions for ohmic and superohmic spectral densities using simple poles.

We present a scheme to express a bath correlation function (BCF) corresponding to a given spectral density (SD) as a sum of damped harmonic oscillations. Such a representation is needed, for example, in many open quantum system approaches. To this end we introduce a class of fit functions that enables us to model ohmic as well as superohmic behavior. We show that these functions allow for an analytic calculation of the BCF using pole expansions of the temperature dependent hyperbolic cotangent. We demonstrate how to use these functions to fit spectral densities exemplarily for cases encountered in the description of photosynthetic light harvesting complexes. Finally, we compare absorption spectra obtained for different fits with exact spectra and show that it is crucial to take properly into account the behavior at small frequencies when fitting a given SD.