Decoherence effects in reactive scattering

Decoherence effects on quantum and classical dynamics in reactive scattering are examined using a Caldeira-Leggett type model. Through a study of the dynamics of the collinear H + H2 reaction and the transmission over simple one-dimensional barrier potentials, we show that decoherence leads to improved agreement between quantum and classical reactions and transmission probabilities, primarily by increasing the energy dispersion in a well-defined way. Increased potential nonlinearity is seen to require larger decoherence in order to attain comparable quantum-classical agreement.