Related papers: How the Quantum Universe Became Classical
The transition from quantum to classical behavior is a central question in modern physics. How can we rationalize everyday classical observations from an inherently quantum world? For instance, what makes two people, each absorbing an…
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…
In this thesis I present a short review of ideas in quantum information theory. The first chapter contains introductory material, sketching the central ideas of probability and information theory. Quantum mechanics is presented at the level…
Quantum Darwinism recognizes that decoherence imprints redundant records of preferred quasi-classical pointer states on the environment. These redundant records are then accessed by observers. We show how redundancy enables and even implies…
We use the decoherent histories approach to quantum theory to derive the form of an effective theory describing the coupling of classical and quantum variables. The derivation is carried out for a system consisting of a large particle…
This essay provides a short introduction to the ideas and potential implications of quantum physics for scholars in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Quantum-inspired ideas pepper current discourse in all of these fields, in ways…
There is a widespread belief that the classical small inhomogeneities which gave rise to all structures in the Universe through gravitational instability originated from primordial quantum cosmological fluctuations. However, this transition…
This thesis presents a theoretical investigation into the quantum field theoretic aspects of quantum correlations and decoherence in the cosmological spacetimes. We shall focus on the inflationary or dark energy dominated phase of the…
I give a review of the conceptual issues that arise in theories of quantum cosmology. I start by emphasising some features of ordinary quantum theory that also play a crucial role in understanding quantum cosmology. I then give motivations…
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…
The most striking observable feature of our indeterministic quantum universe is the wide range of time, place, and scale on which the deterministic laws of classical physics hold to an excellent approximation. This essay describes how this…
Although the foundations of quantum and classical physics are much different, it is often difficult to pinpoint which features of a particular system are intrinsically "quantum". Perhapse, the most clear-cut distinction between "classical"…
The descriptions of the quantum realm and the macroscopic classical world differ significantly not only in their mathematical formulations but also in their foundational concepts and philosophical consequences. When and how physical systems…
We study dynamics of quantum open systems, paying special attention to those aspects of their evolution which are relevant to the transition from quantum to classical. We begin with a discussion of the conditional dynamics of simple…
Although the suspicion that quantum mechanics is emergent has been lingering for a long time, only now we begin to understand how a bridge between classical and quantum mechanics might be squared with Bell's inequalities and other…
Mixing and decoherence are both manifestations of classicality within quantum theory, each of which admit a very general category-theoretic construction. We show under which conditions these two 'roads to classicality' coincide. This is…
This is a very gentle introductory course on quantum mechanics aimed at the first years of the undergraduate level. The basic concepts are introduced, with many applications and illustrations. Contains 12 short chapters of equal length,…
Quantum particles and classical particles are described in a common setting of classical statistical physics. The property of a particle being "classical" or "quantum" ceases to be a basic conceptual difference. The dynamics differs,…
The job of a physicist is to describe Nature. General features, hypotheses and theories help to describe physics phenomena at a more abstract, fundamental level, and are sometimes tacitly assigned some sort of real existence; doing so…
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…