Related papers: Continuous Time in Consistent Histories
In the consistent histories formalism one specifies a family of histories as an exhaustive set of pairwise exclusive descriptions of the dynamics of a quantum system. We define branching families of histories, which strike a middle ground…
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…
A general `quantum history theory' can be characterised by the space of histories and by the space of decoherence functionals. In this note we consider the situation where the space of histories is given by the lattice of projection…
In investigations of the emergence of classicality from quantum theory, a useful step is the construction of quantum operators corresponding to the classical notion that the system resides in a region of phase space. The simplest such…
Modal interpretations of quantum mechanics assign definite properties to physical systems and specify single-time joint probabilities of these properties. We show that a natural extension, applying to properties at several times, can be…
The basic ingredients of the `consistent histories' approach to quantum theory are a space $\UP$ of `history propositions' and a space $\D$ of `decoherence functionals'. In this article we consider such history quantum theories in the case…
The consistent histories formulation of the quantum theory of a closed system with pure initial state defines an infinite number of incompatible consistent sets, each of which gives a possible description of the physics. We investigate the…
Recent work with Dowker on the scientific status of the consistent histories approach to quantum theory is reviewed and summarised. The approach is compared with formulations of quantum theory, such as Bohmian mechanics and the Copenhagen…
Different quantum mechanical operators can correspond to the same classical quantity. Hermitian operators differing only by operator ordering of the canonical coordinates and momenta at one moment of time are the most familiar example.…
There are good motivations for considering some type of quantum histories formalism. Several possible formalisms are known, defined by different definitions of event and by different selection criteria for sets of histories. These…
This paper explores the possibility that an exactly decoherent set of histories may be constructed from an approximately decoherent set by small distortions of the operators characterizing the histories. In particular, for the case of…
We propose a formulation of quantum mechanics in an extended Fock space in which a tensor product structure is applied to time. Subspaces of histories consistent with the dynamics of a particular theory are defined by a direct quantum…
Although quantum computers are predicted to have many commercial applications, less attention has been given to their potential for resolving foundational issues in quantum mechanics. Here we focus on quantum computers' utility for the…
Precise rules are developed in order to formalize the reasoning processes involved in standard non-relativistic quantum mechanics, with the help of analogies from classical physics. A classical or quantum description of a mechanical system…
The (consistent or decoherent) histories interpretation provides a consistent realistic ontology for quantum mechanics, based on two main ideas. First, a logic (system of reasoning) is employed which is compatible with the Hilbert-space…
The foundations of quantum mechanics have been plagued by controversy throughout the 85 year history of the field. It is argued that lack of clarity in the formulation of basic philosophical questions leads to unnecessary obscurity and…
It is shown how consistent histories quantum cosmology can be realised through Isham's Histories Projection Operator consistent histories scheme. This is done by using an affine algebra instead of a canonical one and also by using cocycle…
We analyse and develop the recent suggestion that a temporal form of quantum logic provides the natural mathematical framework within which to discuss the proposal by Gell-Mann and Hartle for a generalised form of quantum theory based on…
In consistent history quantum theory, a description of the time development of a quantum system requires choosing a framework or consistent family, and then calculating probabilities for the different histories which it contains. It is…
An introduction is given to an algebraic formulation and generalisation of the consistent histories approach to quantum theory. The main technical tool in this theory is an orthoalgebra of history propositions that serves as a generalised…