Dynamical Origin of Decoherence in Clasically Chaotic Systems

Abstract

The decay of the overlap between a wave packet evolved with a Hamiltonian H and the same state evolved with H}+$\Sigma $ serves as a measure of the decoherence time $\tau_{\phi}$. Recent experimental and analytical evidence on classically chaotic systems suggest that, under certain conditions, $\tau_{\phi}$ depends on H but not on $\Sigma $. By solving numerically a Hamiltonian model we find evidence of that property provided that the system shows a Wigner-Dyson spectrum (which defines quantum chaos) and the perturbation exceeds a crytical value defined by the parametric correlations of the spectra.