title: Decoherence and thermalization.
abstract: We present a rigorous analysis of the phenomenon of decoherence for general N-level systems coupled to reservoirs of free massless bosonic fields. We apply our general results to the specific case of the qubit. Our approach does not involve master equation approximations and applies to a wide variety of systems which are not explicitly solvable.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2E4. merkli@math.mun.ca
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Merkli
authors.forename: I M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Sigal
authors.forename: G P
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Berman