From classical chaos to decoherence in Robertson-Walker cosmology

We analyze the relationship between classical chaos and particle creation i n Robertson-Walker cosmological models with gravity coupled with a scalar f ield. Within our class of models chaos and particle production are seen to arise in the same cases. Particle production is viewed as the seed of decoh erence, which enables the quantum to classical transition and ensures that the correspondence between the quantum and classically chaotic models will be valid.