Related papers: Consistent Histories and Quantum Reasoning
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…
In consistent history quantum theory, a description of the time development of a quantum system requires choosing a framework or consistent family, and then calculating probabilities for the different histories which it contains. It is…
The (consistent or decoherent) histories interpretation provides a consistent realistic ontology for quantum mechanics, based on two main ideas. First, a logic (system of reasoning) is employed which is compatible with the Hilbert-space…
The consistent histories formulation of the quantum theory of a closed system with pure initial state defines an infinite number of incompatible consistent sets, each of which gives a possible description of the physics. We investigate the…
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…
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…
We present a formulation of the decoherent (or consistent) histories quantum theory of closed systems starting with records of what histories happen. Alternative routes to a formulation of quantum theory like this one can be useful both for…
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…
According to the stochastic-quantum correspondence, a quantum system can be understood as a stochastic process unfolding in an old-fashioned configuration space based on ordinary notions of probability and `indivisible' stochastic laws,…
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…
Quantum theory predicts probabilities as well as relative phases between different alternatives of the system. A unified description of both probabilities and phases comes through a generalisation of the notion of a density matrix for…
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.…
Quantum theory is formulated as the uniquely consistent way to manipulate probability amplitudes. The crucial ingredient is a consistency constraint: if the amplitude of a quantum process can be computed in two different ways, the two…
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…
In this work a generalization of the consistent histories approach to quantum mechanics is presented. We first critically review the consistent histories approach to nonrelativistic quantum mechanics in a mathematically rigorous way and…
It is shown how all the major conceptual difficulties of standard (textbook) quantum mechanics, including the two measurement problems and the (supposed) nonlocality that conflicts with special relativity, are resolved in the consistent or…
An analysis using classical stochastic processes is used to construct a consistent system of quantum counterfactual reasoning. When applied to a counterfactual version of Hardy's paradox, it shows that the probabilistic character of quantum…
Motivated by the advances of quantum Darwinism and recognizing the role played by redundancy in identifying the small subset of quantum states with resilience characteristic of objective classical reality, we explore the implications of…
An introduction is given to an algebraic formulation and generalisation of the consistent histories approach to quantum theory. The main technical tool in this theory is an orthoalgebra of history propositions that serves as a generalised…
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…