Orbital instability and the loss of quantum coherence

We compare quantum decoherence in generic regular and chaotic systems that interact with a thermal reservoir via a dipole coupling. Using a time-dependent, self-consistent approximation in the spirit of Hartree, we derive in the high temperature limit an expression for the off-diagonal elements of the system density operator that initially corresponds to a coherent superposition of two adjacent wave packets. We relate the decoherence rate to the Lyapunov exponent in the Ehrenfest regime. In this regime, the greater the instability of the system the faster the loss of coherence occurs.

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