Decoherence, Chaos, and the Correspondence Principle
Decoherence, Chaos, and the Correspondence Principle
We present evidence that decoherence can produce a smooth quantum-to-classical transition in nonlinear dynamical systems. High-resolution tracking of quantum and classical evolutions reveals differences in expectation values of corresponding observables. Solutions of master equations demonstrate that decoherence destroys quantum interference in Wigner distributions and washes out fine structure in classical …