Related papers: A decoherence-based approach to the classical limi…
The fact that gravitational environments cannot be shielded (since gravity is universal) makes them of great theoretical interest to decoherence mechanisms and to the quantum-to-classical transition. While past results seemed to indicate…
Quantum decoherence, the process by which a quantum system loses its coherence through interaction with an environment and becomes classical-like, represents both the fundamental mechanism for the quantum-to-classical transition and a major…
The decoherence mechanism signals the limits beyond which the system dynamics approaches the classical behavior. We show that in some cases decoherence may also signal the limits beyond which the system dynamics has to be described by…
Real world quantum systems are open to perpetual influence from the wider environment. Quantum gravitational fluctuations provide a most fundamental source of the environmental influence through their universal interactions with all forms…
A novel two-tiered organization of the microworld is presented, in which only the fundamental quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics (electrons, photons, quarks, etc.) are true quantum waves, exhibiting linear…
The relationship between classical and quantum theory is of central importance to the philosophy of physics, and any interpretation of quantum mechanics has to clarify it. Our discussion of this relationship is partly historical and…
This review summarizes and amplifies on recent investigations of coupled quantum dynamical systems in the short wavelength limit. We formulate and attempt to answer three fundamental questions: (i) What drives a dynamical quantum system to…
To discuss the quantum to classical transition in quantum cosmology, we study the decoherence factor and the peak of the Wigner function, which respectively represent the degree of decoherence and the degree to which the classical motion of…
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…
We provide an alternative approach to the decoherence-by-environment paradigm in the field of the quantum measurement process and the appearance of a classical world. In contrast to the decoherence approach we argue that the transition from…
The theory of decoherent histories is an attempt to derive classical physics from positing only quantum laws at the fundamental level without notions of a classical apparatus or collapse of the wave-function. Searching for a marked target…
In this paper we present a first-principles analysis of the nonequilibrium work distribution and the free energy difference of a quantum system interacting with a general environment (with arbitrary spectral density and for all…
Here I explore a novel no-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics which combines aspects of two familiar and well-developed alternatives, Bohmian mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation. Despite reproducing the empirical…
The goal of the present account is to review our efforts to obtain and apply a ``collective'' Hamiltonian for a few, approximately decoupled, adiabatic degrees of freedom, starting from a Hamiltonian system with more or many more degrees of…
The mechanism of selectivity in ion channels is still an open question in biology. According to recent proposals, it seems that the selectivity filter of the ion channel, which plays a key role in the channel's function, may show quantum…
Quantum gravity aims to describe gravity in quantum mechanical terms. How exactly this needs to be done remains an open question. Various proposals have been put on the table, such as canonical quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity, string…
We analyze the decoherence induced on a single qubit by the interaction with a two-level boson system with critical internal dynamics. We explore how the decoherence process is affected by the presence of quantum phase transitions in the…
In this topical review we discuss the connections between chaos, decoherence and quantum cosmology. We understand chaos as classical chaos in systems with a finite number of degrees of freedom, decoherence as environment induced decoherence…
Decoherence shows how the openness of quantum systems -- interaction with their environment -- suppresses flagrant manifestations of quantumness. Einselection accounts for the emergence of preferred quasi-classical pointer states. Quantum…
The theory of decoherence attempts to explain the emergent classical behaviour of a quantum system interacting with its quantum environment. In order to formalize this mechanism we introduce the idea that the information preserved in an…