Fidelity serves as a benchmark for the relieability in quantum information processes, and has recently atracted much interest as a measure of the susceptibility of dynamics to perturbations. A rich variety of regimes for fidelity decay have emerged. The purpose of the present review is to describe these regimes, to give the theory that supports them, and to show some important applications and experiments. While we mention several approaches we use time correlation functions as a backbone for the discussion. Vanicek's uniform approach to semiclassics and random matrix theory provides an important alternative or complementary aspects. Other methods will be mentioned as we go along. Recent experiments in micro-wave cavities and in elastodynamic systems as well as suggestions for experiments in quantum optics shall be discussed.Comment: Review article with some original results in integrable systems and random matrix models; 133 pages, 53 figure

We propose to study echo dynamics in a random matrix framework, where we assume that the perturbation is time independent, random and orthogonally invariant. This allows to use a basis in which the unperturbed Hamiltonian is diagonal and its properties are thus largely determined by its spectral statistics. We concentrate on the effect of spectral correlations usually associated to chaos and disregard secular variations in spectral density. We obtain analytic results for the fidelity decay in the linear response regime. To extend the domain of validity, we heuristically exponentiate the linear response result. The resulting expressions, exact in the perturbative limit, are accurate approximations in the transition region between the "Fermi golden rule" and the perturbative regimes, as examplarily verified for a deterministic chaotic system. To sense the effect of spectral stiffness, we apply our model also to the extreme cases of random spectra and equidistant spectra. In our analytical approximations as well as in extensive Monte Carlo calculations, we find that fidelity decay is fastest for random spectra and slowest for equidistant ones, while the classical ensembles lie in between. We conclude that spectral stiffness systematically enhances fidelity.

The concept of fidelity decay is discussed from the point of view of the scattering matrix, and the scattering fidelity is introduced as the parametric cross-correlation of a given S-matrix element, taken in the time domain, normalized by the corresponding autocorrelation function. We show that for chaotic systems, this quantity represents the usual fidelity amplitude, if appropriate ensemble and/or energy averages are taken. We present a microwave experiment where the scattering fidelity is measured for an ensemble of chaotic systems. The results are in excellent agreement with random matrix theory for the standard fidelity amplitude. The only parameter, namely the perturbation strength could be determined independently from level dynamics of the system, thus providing a parameter free agreement between theory and experiment.

In a complex scattering system with few open channels, say a quantum dot with leads, the correlation properties of the poles of the scattering matrix are most directly related to the internal dynamics of the system. We may ask how to extract these properties from an analysis of cross sections. In general this is very difficult, if we leave the domain of isolated resonances. We propose to consider the cross correlation function of two different elastic or total cross sections. For these we can show numerically and to some extent also analytically a significant dependence on the correlations between the scattering poles. The difference between uncorrelated and strongly correlated poles is clearly visible, even for strongly overlapping resonances. PACS number(s): 05.45.Mt, 03.65.Nk