Related papers: Three consequences of decompositional consistency
Decoherence is widely felt to have something to do with the quantum measurement problem, but getting clear on just what is made difficult by the fact that the "measurement problem", as traditionally presented in foundational and…
It is shown that the classical book by von Neumann proposing dynamics of measured systems with "reduction (or collapse) of system's wave packet" contains also hints how to avoid this discontinuity in time evolution of the measured system…
We give an elementary account of quantum measurement and related topics from the modern perspective of decoherence. The discussion should be comprehensible to students who have completed a basic course in quantum mechanics with exposure to…
The measurement process in quantum mechanics is usually described by the von Neumann projection postulate, which forms a basic constituent of the laws of quantum mechanics. Since this postulate requires the outside observer of the system,…
It has been proposed that measurement in quantum mechanics results from spontaneous breaking of a symmetry of the measuring apparatus and could be a unitary process that preserves coherence. Viewed in this manner, it is argued,…
We present a detailed report on the decoherence of quantum states of continuous variable systems under the action of a quantum optical master equation resulting from the interaction with general Gaussian uncorrelated environments. The rate…
Environment-induced decoherence and superselection have been a subject of intensive research over the past two decades, yet their implications for the foundational problems of quantum mechanics, most notably the quantum measurement problem,…
If the block universe view is correct, the future and the past have similar status and one would expect physical theories to involve final as well as initial boundary conditions. A plausible consistency condition between the initial and…
Quantum decoherence refers to the phenomenon when the interaction of a quantum system with its environment results in the degradation of quantum coherence. Decoherence is considered to be the most popular mechanism responsible for the…
The entangled "measurement state" (MS), predicted by von Neumann to arise during quantum measurement, seems to display paradoxical properties such as multiple macroscopic outcomes. But analysis of interferometry experiments using entangled…
We show that long standing debates on the collapse and the role of the observer in quantum mechanics can be resolved experimentally via a nondistructive continuous monitoring of a single quantum system. An example of such a system, coupled…
The probability operator is derived from first principles for an equilibrium quantum system. It is also shown that the superposition states collapse into a mixture of states giving the conventional von Neumann trace form for the quantum…
In a close form without referring the time-dependent Hamiltonian to the total system, a consistent approach for quantum measurement is proposed based on Zurek's triple model of quantum decoherence [W.Zurek, Phys. Rev. D 24, 1516 (1981)]. An…
Consideration of the von Neumann measurement process underlying interference experiments shows that the uncertainty in the incoming wave, responsible for its interference, translates during measurement into an uncertainty at the measuring…
The measurement problem is to explain why a system which is in a linear combination of states appears, upon measurement, to be in just one of those states. The solution given here is to first show that if one assumes linear, unitary, no…
J. v. Neumann justified the collapse postulate by the empirical fact of the repeatability of a measurement at a single quantum system. However, in his quantum mechanical treatment of the measurement process repeatability emerges without…
The decoherence interpretation of quantum measurements is applied to Wigner's friend experiments. A framework in which all the experimental outcomes arise from unitary evolutions is proposed. Within it, a measurement is not completed until…
It is shown that having degenerate ground states over the domain of the wavefunction of a system is a sufficient condition for a quantum system to act as a measuring apparatus for the system. Measurements are then instances of spontaneous…
Within the decoherence theory we investigate the physical background of the condition of the separability (diagonalizability in noncorrelated basis) of the interaction Hamiltonian of the composite system, "system plus environment". It…
We present a general analytic method for evaluating the generally time-dependent pointer states of a subsystem, which are defined by their capability not to entangle with the states of another subsystem. In this way, we show how in practice…