Dephasing due to the interaction with chaotic degrees of freedom

Abstract

We consider the motion of a particle, taking into account its interaction with environmental degrees of freedom. The dephasing time is determined by the nature of the environment, and depends on the particle velocity. Our interest is in the case where the environment consists of few chaotic degrees of freedom. We obtain results for the dephasing time, and compare them with those of the effective-bath approach. The latter approach is based on the conjecture that the environment can be modelled as a collection of infinitely many harmonic oscillators. The work is related to studies of driven systems, quantum irreversibility, and fidelity. The specific model that we consider requires the solution of the problem of a particle-in-a-box with moving wall, whose 1D version is related to the Fermi acceleration problem.

8 pages, 2 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev. E. This detailed version includes discussion of quantum irreversibility

References in corpus (1)

• Golden rule decay versus Lyapunov decay of the quantum Loschmidt echo

Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Decay of the Loschmidt Echo for quantum states with sub-Planck scale structures
• Quantum irreversibility, perturbation independent decay, and the parametric theory of the local density of states
• Critical Fidelity
• Quantum Reversibility: Is there an Echo?
• Stadium Billiard with Moving Walls
• Quantum Irreversibility of Energy Spreading
• Quantum chaotic system as a model of decohering environment
• Decoherence, entanglement decay, and equilibration produced by chaotic environments
• Diffractive energy spreading and its semiclassical limit