Emergence of classicality via decoherence described by Lindblad operators

Zurek, Habib, and Paz [Phys. Rev. Lett. 70, 1187 (1993)] have characterized the set of states of maximal stability defined as the set of states having minimum entropy increase due to interaction with an environment and shown that coherent states are maximal for the particular environment model examined. To generalize these results, I consider entropy production within the Lindblad theory of open systems, treating environment effects perturbatively. I characterize the maximally predicitive states that emerge from several forms of effective dynamics, including decoherence from spatially correlated noise. Under a variety of conditions, coherent states emerge as the maximal states.