Related papers: Decoherence and Ontology, or: How I Learned To Sto…
We investigate whether quantum theory can be understood as the continuum limit of a mechanical theory, in which there is a huge, but finite, number of classical 'worlds', and quantum effects arise solely from a universal interaction between…
It is argued that those who defend the Everett, or `Many Worlds', interpretation of quantum mechanics should embrace what we call the general quantum theory of open systems (GT) as the proper framework in which to conduct foundational and…
The ordinary linear quantum theory predicts the quantum correlations at any distance (the universal superposition principle). It creates the decoherence problem since quantum interactions entangle states into non-separable combination. On…
Answers to the question how a classical world emerges from underlying quantum physics are revisited, connected and extended as follows. First, three distinct concepts are compared: decoherence in open quantum systems, consistent/decoherent…
The inherent difficulty in talking about quantum decoherence in the context of quantum cosmology is that decoherence requires subsystems, and cosmology is the study of the whole Universe. Consistent histories gave a possible answer to this…
The problem of interpreting quantum theory on a large (e.g. cosmological) scale has been commonly conceived as a search for objective reality in a framework that is fundamentally probabilistic. The Everett programme attempts to evade the…
The quantum description of the microscopic world is incompatible with the classical description of the macroscopic world, both mathematically and conceptually. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that classical mechanics emerges from…
In this brief note, we argue that contrarily to what is still often stated, the Everett many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is not in principle impossible to test. It is actually not more difficult (but not easier either) to…
This is an informal introduction to the ideas of decoherence and emergent classicality, including a simple account of the decoherent histories approach to quantum theory. It is aimed at undergraduates with a basic appreciation of quantum…
It is shown that Non-unitary Newtonian Gravity (NNG) model admits a simple interpretation in terms of Feynman path integral, in which the sum over all possible histories is replaced by a summation over pairs of paths. Correlations between…
I present a simple baby-steps reconstruction of quantum mechanics as a fully classical theory. The most radical conceptual leap required is that there are many coexisting classical worlds, but even this is justified by the necessity of…
The notion of objective probability or chance, as a physical trait of the world, has proved elusive; the identification of chances with actual frequencies does not succeed. An adequate theory of chance should explain not only the connection…
We review some of the well-known features of quantum cosmology, such as the factor ordering problem, the wave function and the density matrix, for a dark energy dominated universe, where analytical solutions can be obtained. For the…
Endeavoring to formulate an exhaustive solution to the measurement problem in view of the theory of decoherence leads to a better understanding of the status of the collapse and of the emergence of classicality, thanks to a precise…
We argue that the many-worlds of quantum mechanics and the many worlds of the multiverse are the same thing, and that the multiverse is necessary to give exact operational meaning to probabilistic predictions from quantum mechanics.…
The three major theoretical principles of quantum mechanics relevant to its interpretation are: (T1), linearity; (T2), invariance under certain groups; and (T3) the orthogonality and isolation of the different branches of the state vector.…
The formalism of quantum theory over discrete systems is extended in two significant ways. First, quantum evolutions are generalized to act over entire network configurations, so that nodes may find themselves in a quantum superposition of…
As illustrated by Schrodingers cat, there are often several macroscopically different versions of reality simultaneously existing in the wave function. On the face of it, this would seem to imply that an observer could perceive a…
Constructivist epistemology posits that all truths are knowable. One might ask to what extent constructivism is compatible with naturalized epistemology and knowledge obtained from inference-making using successful scientific theories. If…
Quantum coherence is a fundamental characteristic to distinguish quantum systems from their classical counterparts. Though quantum coherence persists in isolated non-interacting systems, interactions inevitably lead to decoherence, which is…