Decoherence in field theory: general couplings and slow quenches

Abstract We study the onset of a classical order parameter after a second-order phase transition in quantum field theory. We consider a quantum scalar field theory in which the system-field (long-wavelength modes), interacts with its environment, represented both by a set of scalar fields and by its own short-wavelength modes. We compute the decoherence times for the system-field modes and compare them with the other time scales of the model. We analyze different couplings between the system and the environment for slow quenches. Within our approximations decoherence is in general a short time event.