Decoherence and Dynamical Chaos

Decoherence theory has a fundamental interest since it provides explanations for the emergence of classicality in a world governed by the laws of quantum mechanics . It is also relevant for actual implementation of any quantum computation and communication protocol .Here we address the question if a many-body environment can be substituted, without changing theeffects on system's dynamics, by a closed deterministic system with a small number of degrees of freedom, yet chaotic. We give a positive answer and in particular we show that the complexity of the environment arises from the chaotic dynamics rather than from the many-body nature.