Phys. Rev. A 68, 012105 (2003) [16 pages]Collisional decoherence reexaminedReceived 5 March 2003; published 21 July 2003 We rederive the quantum master equation for the decoherence of a massive Brownian particle due to collisions with lighter particles from a thermal environment. Our careful treatment avoids the occurrence of squares of Dirac δ functions. It leads to a decoherence rate that is smaller by a factor of 2π compared to previous findings. This result, which is in agreement with recent experiments, is confirmed both by a physical analysis of the problem and by a perturbative calculation in the weak-coupling limit. © 2003 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.68.012105
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.68.012105
PACS:
03.65.Yz, 03.65.Ta, 03.75.-b
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