English

Two Roads to Classicality

Quantum Physics 2018-03-05 v2

Abstract

Mixing and decoherence are both manifestations of classicality within quantum theory, each of which admit a very general category-theoretic construction. We show under which conditions these two 'roads to classicality' coincide. This is indeed the case for (finite-dimensional) quantum theory, where each construction yields the category of C*-algebras and completely positive maps. We present counterexamples where the property fails which includes relational and modal theories. Finally, we provide a new interpretation for our category-theoretic generalisation of decoherence in terms of 'leaking information'.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1701.07400,
  title  = {Two Roads to Classicality},
  author = {Bob Coecke and John Selby and Sean Tull},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1701.07400},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

In Proceedings QPL 2017, arXiv:1802.09737

R2 v1 2026-06-22T18:00:14.530Z