Wave packet decoherence in momentum space

We consider the development of decoherence between the momentum components of a wave packet of a non relativistic charged particle interacting linearly with the electromagnetic field in equilibrium at temperature T. By adopting from the beginning the electric dipole approximation the Hamiltonian assumes a form analogous to the one used in the context of quantum computing for an ensemble of two level systems. We obtain the characteristic vacuum and thermal decoherence times and we show that decoherence between different momenta is due to the onset of a correlation between each momentum component and the associated transverse photons that are also responsible of mass renormalization.