  Temporal coherence is a fundamental property of macroscopic quantum systems,
such as lasers in optics and Bose-Einstein condensates in atomic gases and it
is a crucial issue for interferometry applications with light or matter waves.
Whereas the laser is an "open" quantum system, ultracold atomic gases are
weakly coupled to the environment and may be considered as isolated. The
coherence time of a condensate is then intrinsic to the system and its
derivation is out of the frame of laser theory. Using quantum kinetic theory,
we predict that the interaction with non-condensed modes gradually smears out
the condensate phase, with a variance growing as A t^2+B t+C at long times t,
and we give a quantitative prediction for A, B and C. Whereas the coefficient A
vanishes for vanishing energy fluctuations in the initial state, the
coefficients B and C are remarkably insensitive to these fluctuations. The
coefficient B describes a diffusive motion of the condensate phase that sets
the ultimate limit to the condensate coherence time. We briefly discuss the
possibility to observe the predicted phase spreading, also including the effect
of particle losses.
