COHERENT STATES VIA DECOHERENCE

The rate at which pure initial states deteriorate into mixtures is computed for a harmonic oscillator interacting with an environment in thermal equilibrium. The decoherence process resulting from this interaction selects a set of states characterized by maximal stability (or minimal loss of predictive power) which can be quantified by the rate of increase in either linear or statistical entropy. In the weak coupling limit, coherent states are shown to produce the least entropy, thus becoming the natural counterparts of classical points in phase space.