English

Completeness of Decoherence Functionals

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology 2009-10-28 v2

Abstract

The basic ingredients of the `consistent histories' approach to a generalized quantum theory are `histories'and decoherence functionals. The main aim of this program is to find and to study the behaviour of consistent sets associated with a particular decoherence functional dd. In its recent formulation by Isham it is natural to identify the space \UP\UP of propositions about histories with an orthoalgebra or lattice. When \UP\UP is given by the lattice of projectors \PV\PV in some Hilbert space \V\V, consistent sets correspond to certain partitions of the unit operator in \V\V into mutually orthogonal projectors {\a1,\a2,}\{\a_1,\a_2,\ldots\}, such that the function d(\a,\a)d(\a,\a) is a probability distribution on the boolean algebra generated by {\a1,\a2,}\{\a_1,\a_2,\ldots\}. Using the classification theorem for decoherence functionals, proven previously, we show that in the case where \V\V is some separable Hilbert space there exists for each partition of the unit operator into a set of mutually orthogonal projectors, and for any probability distribution p(\a)p(\a) on the corresponding boolean algebra, decoherence functionals dd with respect to which this set is consistent and which are such that for the probability functions d(\a,\a)=p(\a)d(\a,\a)=p(\a) holds.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.gr-qc/9502036,
  title  = {Completeness of Decoherence Functionals},
  author = {S. Schreckenberg},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:gr-qc/9502036},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

11 pages, Latex; some comments and a reference added. version to appear in JMP 1995