Decoherence and localization in the Fermi accelerator

The one-body dissipation mechanism has been successfully employed in the de scription of nuclear reactions at intermediate energies. However, detailed simulations show that quantum localization would strongly suppress this dis sipation mechanism. The fact that particle emission accompanies the reactio n process, has not been taken into account. We show, through Fermi accelera tor simulations, that the changes in the system's parameters brought by thi s effect alone are enough to destroy the quantum localization. (C) 2000 Els evier Science B.V. All rights reserved.