We demonstrate that, for a simple model of the damped oscillator, both the wave packet in the position representation and oscillator expectation values are insensitive to the rapid decay of off-diagonal coherences. This rapid decay is, however, seen in the von Neumann entropy for the oscillator and the wave packet in the number representation.

• Received 16 November 1989

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.41.5132