  Effect of a complicated many-body environment is analyzed on the chaotic
motion of a quantum particle in a mesoscopic ballistic structure. The dephasing
and absorption phenomena are treated on the same footing in the framework of a
schematic microscopic model. The single-particle doorway resonance states
excited in the structure via an external channel are damped not only because of
the escape onto such channels but also due to ulterior population of the
long-lived background states. The transmission through the structure is
presented as an incoherent sum of the flow formed by the interfering damped
doorway resonances and the retarded flow of the particles reemitted by the
environment. The resulting internal damping as well as the dephasing rate are
uniquely expressed in terms of the spreading width which controls the coupling
to the background. The formation of the long-lived fine-structure resonances
strongly enhances delay time fluctuations thus broadening the delay time
distribution.
