  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.
