Modeling the reversible decoherence of mesoscopic superpositions in dissipative environments

A model is presented to describe the recently proposed experiment [J. Raimond, M. Brune, and S. Haroche, Phys. Rev. Lett 79, 1964 (1997)] in which a mesoscopic superposition of radiation states is prepared in a high-Q cavity that is coupled to a similar resonator. The dynamical coherence loss of such a state in the absence of dissipation is reversible and can be observed in principle. We show how this picture is modified due to the presence of the environmental couplings. Analytical expressions for the experimental conditional probabilities and the linear entropy are given. We conclude that the phenomenon can still be observed provided the ratio between the damping constant and the intercavities coupling does not exceed about a few percent. This observation is favored for superpositions of states with a large overlap