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.
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Hornberger et al. (2003) studied this question.
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