Emergence of non-Markovian Decoherent Histories in Integrable Environment: A "Tape Recorder" Model for Local Quantum Observables

Abstract: We propose a new approach to coarse-grained descriptions of a system that provides an explicit evaluation of multi-time decoherent histories in a controlled way, applicable to non-Markovian and integrable systems. Specifically, we study a local interaction quench of a local degree of freedom (an open quantum system) within a noninteracting integrable environment. This setting allows us to identify the environmental degrees of freedom that irreversibly store records of the system's past. These modes emerge sequentially in time and define the projections required for decoherent histories. We show numerically that the off-diagonal elements of the decoherence functional are exponentially suppressed relative to a significance threshold.