Related papers: The histories interpretation: stability instead of…
We discuss the applicability of the programme of decoherence -- emergence of approximate classical behaviour through interaction with the environment -- to cases where it was suggested that the presence of symmetries would lead to exact…
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…
Contextuality is considered as one of the most distinctive features of nonclassical systems. Here, we show that a Spekkens contextual system (which previous work has shown is a necessary condition for nonclassicality) formed of an…
Classical properties of an open quantum system emerge through its interaction with other degrees of freedom (decoherence). We treat the case where this interaction produces a Markovian master equation for the system. We derive the…
We investigate the possibility of assigning consistent probabilities to sets of histories characterized by whether they enter a particular subspace of the Hilbert space of a closed system during a given time interval. In particular we…
The concept of decoherence is defined, and discussed in a historical context. This is illustrated by some of its essential consequences which may be relevant for the interpretation of quantum theory. Various aspects of the formalism are…
In the histories formulation of quantum theory, sets of coarse-grained histories that are consistent obey the classical probability rules. It has been argued that these sets can describe the quasi-classical behaviour of closed quantum…
For a wide set of quantum systems it is demonstrated that the quantum regime can be considered as the transient phase while the final classical statistical regime is a permanent state. A basis where exact matrix decoherence appears for…
There are many formalisms to describe quantum decoherence. However, many of them give a non general and ad hoc definition of "pointer basis" or "moving preferred basis", and this fact is a problem for the decoherence program. In this paper…
Reasoning about unpredicted change consists in explaining observations by events; we propose here an approach for explaining time-stamped observations by surprises, which are simple events consisting in the change of the truth value of a…
John Wheeler devised a gedanken experiment in which a piece of apparatus can be altered just before the arrival of particle, and this ``delayed choice'' can, seemingly, alter the quantum state of the particle at a much earlier time, long…
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…
There are several extensions of the classical Banach Fixed Point Theorem in technical literature. A branch of generalizations replaces usual contractivity by weaker but still effective assumptions. Our note follows this stream, presenting…
The Consistent Histories (CH) formalism aims at a quantum mechanical framework which could be applied even to the universe as a whole. CH stresses the importance of histories for quantum mechanics, as opposed to measurements, and maintains…
We show that the quantum description of measurement based on decoherence fixes the bug in quantum theory discussed in [D. Frauchiger and R. Renner, {\em Quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself}, Nat. Comm. {\bf 9},…
We present some novel results indicating that time's description in present-day physics is deficient. We use Hawking's information-erasure hypothesis to counter his own claim that time's arrow depends only on initial conditions. Next, we…
In the context of the decoherent histories approach to quantum theory, it is shown that a class of macroscopic configurations consisting of histories of local densities (number, momentum, energy) exhibit negligible interference. This…
We show that the Wheeler-DeWitt equation with a consistent boundary condition is only compatible with an arrow of time that formally reverses in a recollapsing universe. Consistency of these opposite arrows is facilitated by quantum effects…
We recast into histories-based form a quantum field theory defined earlier in operator language for a free scalar field on a background causal set. The resulting decoherence-functional resembles that of the continuum theory. The counterpart…
The origin of the phenomenological deterministic laws that approximately govern the quasiclassical domain of familiar experience is considered in the context of the quantum mechanics of closed systems such as the universe as a whole. We…