Consistency of Quantum Histories

نویسندگان

  • Juan Pablo Paz
  • Wojciech Hubert Zurek
چکیده

We prove that for an open system, in the Markovian regime, it is always possible to construct an infinite number of non trivial sets of histories that exactly satisfy the probability sum rules. In spite of being perfectly consistent, these sets manifest a very non–classical behavior: they are quite unstable under the addition of an extra instant to the list of times defining the history. To eliminate this feature –whose implications for the interpretation of the formalism we discuss– and to achieve the stability that characterizes the quasiclassical domain, it is necessary to separate the instants which define the history by time intervals significantly larger than the typical decoherence time. In this case environment induced superselection is very effective and the quasiclassical domain is characterized by histories constructed with " pointer projectors " .

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

منابع مشابه

Quantum Histories

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 formalisms have a natural interpretation, according to which nature somehow chooses one set of histories from among those allowed, and then randomly chooses to realis...

متن کامل

Quantum Histories and Their Implications

Classical mechanics and standard Copenhagen quantum mechanics respect subspace implications. For example, if a particle is confined in a particular region R of space, then in these theories we can deduce that it is confined in regions containing R. However, subspace implications are generally violated by versions of quantum theory that assign probabilities to histories, such as the consistent h...

متن کامل

Probability in decoherent histories

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 particular consistency condition. The formalism, however, admits incompatible descriptions which cannot be combined, unlike classical physics. This seems to le...

متن کامل

Branch dependence in the “consistent histories” approach to quantum mechanics

In the consistent histories formalism one specifies a family of histories as an exhaustive set of pairwise exclusive descriptions of the dynamics of a quantum system. We define branching families of histories, which strike a middle ground between the two available mathematically precise definitions of families of histories, viz., product families and Isham’s history projector operator formalism...

متن کامل

Aspects of the Decoherent Histories Approach to Quantum Mechanics

I give an informal overview of the decoherent histories approach to quantum mechanics, due to Griffiths, to Omnès, and to Gell-Mann and Hartle is given. Results on the connections between decoherence, records, correlation and entropy are described. The emphasis of the presentation is on understanding the broader meaning of the conditions of consistency and decoherence, and in particular, the ex...

متن کامل

Stochastic Quantum Dynamics II. Histories and Consistency

⋆ When probability theory is applied to a sequence of events in time, the sample space consists of what we shall call histories. For example, if a coin is tossed twice in a row, the four histories HH, HT , TH, and TT , where HT stands for “heads on the first toss and tails on the second,” represent mutually exclusive possibilities, one and only one of which will occur in a single experimental r...

متن کامل

ذخیره در منابع من


  با ذخیره ی این منبع در منابع من، دسترسی به آن را برای استفاده های بعدی آسان تر کنید

برای دانلود متن کامل این مقاله و بیش از 32 میلیون مقاله دیگر ابتدا ثبت نام کنید

ثبت نام

اگر عضو سایت هستید لطفا وارد حساب کاربری خود شوید

عنوان ژورنال:

دوره   شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 1993