Slippage of initial conditions for the Redfield master equation

For a slow open quantum subsystem weakly coupled to a fast thermal bath, we derive the general form of the slippage to be applied to the initial conditions of the Redfield master equation. This slippage is given by a superoperator which describes the non-Markovian dynamics of the subsystem during the short-time relaxation of the thermal bath. We verify in an example that the Redfield equation preserves positivity after the slippage superoperator has been applied to the initial density matrix of the subsystem. For delta-correlated baths, the Redfield master equation reduces to the Lindblad master equation and the slippage of initial conditions vanishes consistently. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(99)50137-2].