Related papers: Strong Decoherence
In the decoherent histories approach to quantum theory, attention focuses on the conditions under which probabilities may be assigned to sets of quantum histories. A variety of conditions have been proposed, but the most important one is…
We continue our efforts to understand, within the framework of the quantum mechanics of the universe as a whole, the quasiclassical realm of familiar experience as a feature emergent from the Hamiltonian of the elementary particles and the…
Decoherent histories quantum theory is reformulated with the assumption that there is one "real" fine-grained history, specified in a preferred complete set of sum-over-histories variables. This real history is described by embedding it in…
The theory of decoherent histories is checked for the requirement of statistical independence of subsystems. Strikingly, this is satisfied only when the decoherence functional is diagonal in both its real a n d imaginary parts. In…
An example shows that weak decoherence is more restrictive than the minimal logical decoherence structure that allows probabilities to be used consistently for quantum histories. The probabilities in the sum rules that define minimal…
The consistent histories formalism can be used to describe histories comprised of events across many systems, times, and places, plausibly rich enough to describe our experiences of the classical world; however, many consistent history sets…
Within the decoherent histories formulation of quantum mechanics, we investigate necessary conditions for decoherence of arbitrarily long histories. We prove that fine-grained histories of arbitrary length decohere for all classical initial…
A pedagogical introduction is given to the quantum mechanics of closed systems, most generally the universe as a whole. Quantum mechanics aims at predicting the probabilities of alternative coarse-grained time histories of a closed system.…
I review the decoherent (or consistent) histories approach to quantum mechanics, due to Griffiths, to Gell-Mann and Hartle, and to Omnes. This is an approach to standard quantum theory specifically designed to apply to genuinely closed…
We study the decoherence properties of a certain class of Markovian quantum open systems from both the Decohering Histories and Environment Induced Superselection paradigms. The class studied includes many familiar quantum optical cases.…
The decoherent (consistent) histories formalism has been proposed as a means of eliminating measurements as a fundamental concept in quantum mechanics. In this formalism, probabilities can be assigned to any description which satisfies a…
Within the decoherent histories formulation of quantum mechanics, we consider arbitrarily long histories constructed from a fixed projective partition of a finite-dimensional Hilbert space. We review some of the decoherence properties of…
The problem investigated in this paper is einselection, i. e. the selection of mutually exclusive quantum states with definite probabilities through decoherence. Its study is based on a theory of decoherence resulting from the projection…
Using the framework of decoherent histories, we study which past events leave detectable records in isolated quantum systems under the realistic assumption that decoherence is approximate and not perfect. In the first part we establish --…
We present a formulation of the decoherent (or consistent) histories quantum theory of closed systems starting with records of what histories happen. Alternative routes to a formulation of quantum theory like this one can be useful both for…
We review the application of the consistent (or decoherent) histories formulation of quantum theory to canonical loop quantum cosmology. Conventional quantum theory relies crucially on "measurements" to convert unrealized quantum…
We sketch a quantum mechanical framework for the universe as a whole. Within that framework we propose a program for describing the ultimate origin in quantum cosmology of the quasiclassical domain of familiar experience and for…
The predictions of the Bohmian and the decoherent (or consistent) histories formulations of the quantum mechanics of a closed system are compared for histories -- sequences of alternatives at a series of times. For certain kinds of…
The best developed formulation of closed system quantum theory that handles multiple-time statements, is the consistent (or decoherent) histories approach. The most important weaknesses of the approach is that it gives rise to many…
The method of decoherent histories allows probabilities to be assigned to sequences of quantum events in systems, such as the universe as a whole, where there is no external observer to make measurements. This paper applies the method of…