Collective versus Single--Particle Motion in Quantum Many--Body Systems: Spreading and its Semiclassical Interpretation

We study the interplay between collective and incoherent single-particle motion in a model of two chains of particles whose interaction comprises a non-integrable part. In the perturbative regime, but for a general form of the interaction, we calculate the spectral density for collective excitations. We obtain the remarkable result that it always has a unique semiclassical interpretation. We show this by a proper renormalization procedure which allows us to map our system to a Caldeira-Leggett--type of model in which the bath is part of the system.