This paper is based on recent work which provided an exact analytical description of scattering fidelity experiments with a microwave cavity under the variation of an antenna coupling [Kober et al., Phys. Rev. E 82, 036207 (2010)]. It is shown that t
his description can also be used to predict the decay of the fidelity amplitude for arbitrary Hermitian perturbations of a closed system. Two applications are presented: First, the known result for global perturbations is re-derived, and second, the exact analytical expression for the perturbation due to a moving S-wave scatterer is worked out. The latter is compared to measured data from microwave experiments, which have been reported some time ago. Finally, we generalize an important relation between fidelity decay and parametric level correlations to arbitrary perturbations.
