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PIRSA:08090074

Decoherence and the (non)emergence of classicality.

APA

Weinstein, S. (2008). Decoherence and the (non)emergence of classicality.. Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. https://pirsa.org/08090074

Steve Weinstein University of Waterloo

Talk numberPIRSA:08090074
Talk Type Conference
Subject

Abstract

It is widely believed that the dynamical mechanism of decoherence plays a key role in understanding the emergence of classicality from quantum systems, via the environment-induced superselection of a preferred set of subsystem states, the density matrices for which are approximately diagonal in the pointer basis. In this talk, I prove that the vast majority of subsystems do *not* exhibit this behavior, regardless of the Hamiltonian. This shows that the emergence of classicality is highly state-dependent (as suggested by related work of Hartle and others).