  Much of the discussion of decoherence has been in terms of a particle moving
in one dimension that is placed in an initial superposition state (a
Schr\"{o}dinger "cat" state) corresponding to two widely separated wave
packets. Decoherence refers to the destruction of the interference term in the
quantum probability function. Here, we stress that a quantitative measure of
decoherence depends not only on the specific system being studied but also on
whether one is considering coordinate, momentum or phase space. We show that
this is best illustrated by considering Wigner phase space where the measure is
again different. Analytic results for the time development of the Wigner
distribution function for a two-Gaussian Schrodinger "cat" state have been
obtained in the high-temperature limit (where decoherence can occur even for
negligible dissipation) which facilitates a simple demonstration of our
remarks.
