Related papers: Decohering histories and open quantum systems
The aim of this paper is to review a new perspective about decoherence, according to which formalisms originally devised to deal just with closed or open systems can be subsumed under a closed-system approach that generalizes the…
We consider Gell-Mann and Hartle's consistent histories formulation of quantum cosmology in the interpretation in which one history, chosen randomly according to the decoherence functional probabilities, is realised from each consistent…
Our account of the problem of the classical limit of quantum mechanics involves two elements. The first one is self-induced decoherence, conceived as a process that depends on the own dynamics of a closed quantum system governed by a…
The conventional interpretation of quantum mechanics, though it permits a correspondence to classical physics, leaves the exact mechanism of transition unclear. Though this was only of philosophical importance throughout the twentieth…
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…
We find the conditions for one quantum system to function as a classical controller of another quantum system: the controller must be an open system and rapidly diagonalised in the basis of the controller variable that is coupled to the…
Reference frames are of special importance in physics. They are usually considered to be idealized entities. However, in most situations, e.g. in laboratories, physical processes are described within reference frames constituted by physical…
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…
We use a $\lambda\Phi^4$ scalar quantum field theory to illustrate a new approach to the study of quantum to classical transition. In this approach, the decoherence functional is employed to assign probabilities to consistent histories…
The decoherence mechanism signals the limits beyond which the system dynamics approaches the classical behavior. We show that in some cases decoherence may also signal the limits beyond which the system dynamics has to be described by…
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…
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…
The consistent histories approach to quantum mechanics is traditionally based on linearly ordered sequences of events. We extend the histories formalism to sets of events whose causal ordering is described by directed acyclic graphs. The…
Decoherence is the process by which quantum systems interact and become correlated with their external environments; quantum trajectories are a powerful technique by which decohering systems can be resolved into stochastic evolutions,…
We review recent progress in understanding the arrival time problem in quantum mechanics, from the point of view of the decoherent histories approach to quantum theory. We begin by discussing the arrival time problem, focussing in…
The Klein-Gordon equation is a useful test arena for quantum cosmological models described by the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. We use the decoherent histories approach to quantum theory to obtain the probability that a free relativistic…
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…
We give a short, critical review of the issue of decoherence. We establish the most general framework in which decoherence can be discussed, how it can be quantified and how it can be measured. We focus on environment induced decoherence…
We investigate the idea that different interpretations of quantum mechanics can be seen as restrictions of the consistent (or decoherent) histories quantum mechanics of closed systems to particular classes of histories,together with the…
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…