Related papers: Decoherence and Probability
We examine the logical structure of the emergence of classical stochasticity for a quantum system governed by a Pauli-type master equation. It is well-known that while such equations describe the evolution of probabilities, they do not…
I show that frequentism, as an explanation of probability in classical statistical mechanics, can be extended in a natural way to a decoherent quantum history space, the analogue of a classical phase space. The result is a form of finite…
Quantum bits can be isolated to perform useful information-theoretic tasks, even though physical systems are fundamentally described by very high-dimensional operator algebras. This is because qubits can be consistently embedded into…
Recently, it has been shown that probabilistic entailment under coherence is weaker than model-theoretic probabilistic entailment. Moreover, probabilistic entailment under coherence is a generalization of default entailment in System P. In…
The Everett interpretation of quantum mechanics divides naturally into two parts: first, the interpretation of the structure of the quantum state, in terms of branching, and second, the interpretation of this branching structure in terms of…
In the present article we use the quantum formalism to describe the effects of risk and ambiguity in decision theory. The main idea is that the probabilities in the classic theory of expected utility are estimated probabilities, and thus do…
A central feature of quantum mechanics is the non-commutativity of operators used to describe physical observables. In this article, we present a critical analysis on the role of non-commutativity in quantum theory, focusing on its…
The concept of emergence is critically analyzed in particular with respect to the assumed emergence of mental properties from a neuronal basis. We argue that so-called contextual emergence is needed to avoid an eliminatory reductionism.…
The notion of context (complex of physical conditions) is basic in this paper. We show that the main structures of quantum theory (interference of probabilities, Born's rule, complex probabilistic amplitudes, Hilbert state space,…
We develop a new formalism for constructing probabilities associated to the causal ordering of events in quantum theory, where by an event we mean the emergence of a measurement record on a detector. We start with constructing probabilities…
A review of various definitions of "compatibility" expressed in terms of ordinary probability, and a discussion of the occurrence of incompatibility (and the related phenomenon of interference) in non-quantal probabilistic systems.
We examine the relationship between the decoherence of quantum-mechanical histories of a closed system (as discussed by Gell-Mann and Hartle) and environmentally-induced diagonalization of the density operator for an open system. We study a…
We introduce a condition for the strong decoherence of a set of alternative histories of a closed quantum-mechanical system such as the universe. The condition applies, for a pure initial state, to sets of homogeneous histories that are…
We give an explicit, rigorous framework for calculating quantum probabilities in a model theory of quantum gravity. Specifically, we construct the decoherence functional for the Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of a flat…
An example is presented when decoherence and quantum interference gives rise to narrow eigenstates (in coordinate representation) for the reduced density matrix of macroscopic quantum systems. On the basis of modal interpretations this…
The role of probability in quantum mechanics is reviewed, with a discussion of the ``orthodox'' versus the statistical interpretive frameworks, and of a number of related issues. After a brief summary of sources of unease with quantum…
Although quantum coherence is a basic trait of quantum mechanics, the presence of coherences in the quantum description of a certain phenomenon does not rule out the possibility to give an alternative description of the same phenomenon in…
The question of classicality is addressed in relation with the shape of the nuclear skeleton of molecular systems. As the most natural environment, the electrons of the molecule are considered as continuously monitoring agents for the…
I defend an analog of probabilism that characterizes rationally coherent estimates for chances. Specifically, I demonstrate the following accuracy-dominance result for stochastic theories in the C*-algebraic framework: supposing an…
As physics searches for invariants in observations, this paper looks for invariants of probabilistic observation without assuming physical structure. Structure emerges from the basic assumption of science that new information shall lead to…