Related papers: Probability, Arrow of Time and Decoherence
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…
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…
The spread of the time arrows from the environment to an observed subsystem is followed within a harmonic model. A similarity is pointed out between irreversibility and a phase with spontaneously broken symmetry. The causal structure of…
We reconsider the Decoherent Histories approach to Quantum Mechanics and we analyze some problems related to its interpretation which, according to us, have not been adequately clarified by its proponents. We put forward some assumptions…
One cannot justifiably presuppose the physical salience of structures derived via decoherence theory based upon an entirely uninterpreted use of the quantum formalism. Non-probabilistic accounts of the emergence of probability via…
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…
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…
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…
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 inherent difficulty in talking about quantum decoherence in the context of quantum cosmology is that decoherence requires subsystems, and cosmology is the study of the whole Universe. Consistent histories gave a possible answer to this…
In the arrival time problem in quantum mechanics, a standard formula that frequently emerges as the probability for crossing the origin during a given time interval is the current integrated over that time interval. This is semiclassically…
This paper is concerned with two questions in the decoherent histories approach to quantum mechanics: the emergence of approximate classical predictability, and the fluctuations about it necessitated by the uncertainty principle. We…
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 consider a number of aspects of the problem of defining time observables in quantum theory. Time observables are interesting quantities in quantum theory because they often cannot be associated with self-adjoint operators. Their…
In this paper I suggest a possible explanation for the asymmetry of time. In the case that I study, the dynamical laws and the boundary conditions are symmetric, but the behavior of time is not. The underlying mechanism is statistical and…
We use the decoherent histories approach to quantum theory to compute the probability of a non-relativistic particle crossing $x=0$ during an interval of time. For a system consisting of a single non-relativistic particle, histories…
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…
This paper discusses the relation between the decoherent histories approach to quantum mechanics that is based on coarse-grained decoherent histories of a closed system, and the approximate quantum mechanics of measured subsystems, as in…
Decoherent histories quantum theory is reformulated with the assumption that there is one "real" fine-grained history, specified in a preferred complete set of sum-over-histories variables. This real history is described by embedding it in…
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…