Related papers: Probabilities and Quantum Reality: Are There Corre…
We argue that the complex numbers are an irreducible object of quantum probability. This can be seen in the measurements of geometric phases that have no classical probabilistic analogue. Having complex phases as primitive ingredient…
I show a situation of multiparticle entanglement which cannot be explained in the framework of an interpretation of quantum mechanics recently proposed by Mermin. This interpretation is based on the assumption that correlations between…
Traditional interpretations of quantum theory in terms of wave function collapse are particularly unappealing when considering the universe as a whole, where there is no clean separation between classical observer and quantum system and…
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 quantum reality problem is that of finding a mathematically precise definition of a sample space of configurations of beables, events, histories, paths, or other mathematical objects, and a corresponding probability distribution, for…
Recent accounts of probability in the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics are vulnerable due to their dependence on probability theory per se. For this reason, the many worlds interpretation continues to suffer from 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 quantum mechanics of closed systems such as the universe is formulated using an extension of familiar probability theory that incorporates negative probabilities. Probabilities must be positive for sets of alternative histories that are…
We study the role of context, complex of physical conditions, in quantum as well as classical experiments. It is shown that by taking into account contextual dependence of experimental probabilities we can derive the quantum rule for the…
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…
The decoherent histories approach is a natural medium in which to address problems in quantum theory which involve time in a non-trivial way. This article reviews the various attempts and difficulties involved in using the decoherent…
We introduce the notion of hidden quantum correlations. We present the mean values of observables depending on one classical random variable described by the probability distribution in the form of correlation functions of two (three, etc.)…
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…
This work discusses simple examples how quantum systems are obtained as subsystems of classical statistical systems. For a single qubit with arbitrary Hamiltonian and for the quantum particle in a harmonic potential we provide explicitly…
We illustrate the crucial role played by decoherence (consistency of quantum histories) in extracting consistent quantum probabilities for alternative histories in quantum cosmology. Specifically, within a Wheeler-DeWitt quantization of a…
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.…
The theory of probability and the quantum theory, the one mathematical and the other physical, are related in that each admits a number of very different interpretations. It has been proposed that the conceptual problems of the quantum…
Inspired by quantum cosmology, in which the wave function of the universe is annihilated by the total Hamiltonian, we consider the internal dynamics of a simple particle system in an energy eigenstate. Such a system does not possess a…
Quantum mechanics introduces the concept of probability at the fundamental level, yielding the measurement problem. On the other hand, recent progress in cosmology has led to the "multiverse" picture, in which our observed universe is only…
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…