Decoherence of domains and defects at phase transitions

Abstract

In this further Letter on the onset of classical behaviour in field theory due to a phase transition, we show that it can be phrased easily in terms of the decoherence functional, without having to use the master equation. To demonstrate this, we consider the decohering effects due to the displacement of domain boundaries, with implications for the displacement of defects, in general. We see that decoherence arises so quickly in this event, that it is negligible in comparison to decoherence due to field fluctuations in the way defined in our previous papers.