Exact Description of Decoherence in Optical Cavities

The exact reduced dynamics for the independent oscillator model in the RWA approximation at zero and finite temperatures is derived. It is shown that the information about the interaction and the environment is encapsulated into three time dependent coefficients of the master equation, one of which vanishes in the zero temperature case. In currently used optical cavities all the information about the field dynamics is contained into {\it two} (or three) experimentally accesible and physically meaningful real functions of time. From the phenomenological point of view it suffices then to carefully measure two ({\it three}) adequate observables in order to map the evolution of any initial condition, as shown with several examples: (generalized) coherent states, Fock states, Schr\"odinger cat states, and squeezed states.