Decoherence at the level of eigenstates

Abstract

An eigenstate decoherence hypothesis states that each individual eigenstate of a large closed system is locally classical-like. We extend this hypothesis to account for a typically extremely short time scale of decoherence. The extension implies that nondiagonal matrix elements of certain operators - quantumness witnesses - are suppressed as long as the energy difference between corresponding eigenstates is smaller than the inverse decoherence time.