  Consider a bipartite system, of which one subsystem, A, undergoes a physical
evolution separated from the other subsystem, R. One may ask under which
conditions this evolution destroys all initial correlations between the
subsystems A and R, i.e. decouples the subsystems. A quantitative answer to
this question is provided by decoupling theorems, which have been developed
recently in the area of quantum information theory. This paper builds on
preceding work, which shows that decoupling is achieved if the evolution on A
consists of a typical unitary, chosen with respect to the Haar measure,
followed by a process that adds sufficient decoherence. Here, we prove a
generalized decoupling theorem for the case where the unitary is chosen from an
approximate two-design. A main implication of this result is that decoupling is
physical, in the sense that it occurs already for short sequences of random
two-body interactions, which can be modeled as efficient circuits. Our
decoupling result is independent of the dimension of the R system, which shows
that approximate 2-designs are appropriate for decoupling even if the dimension
of this system is large.
