Measuring irreversible dynamics of a quantum harmonic oscillator

We show that the unitary evolution of a harmonic oscillator coupled to a two-level system can be undone by a suitable manipulation of the two-level system—more specifically, by a quasi-instantaneous phase change. This enables us to isolate the dissipative evolution to which the oscillator may be exposed in addition. With this method we study the decoherence time of a photon mode in cavity QED, and that of the quantized harmonic motion of trapped ions. We comment on the relation to spin echoes and multipath interferometry.