Quasiclassical Dynamics in a Closed Quantum System

Abstract

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 set. We show that in this interpretation, if one assumes that an observed quasiclassical structure will continue to be quasiclassical, one cannot infer that it will obey the predictions of classical or Copenhagen quantum mechanics.

Published version, to appear in Phys. Rev. A. Clarificatory remarks added on interpretations outside the scope of the paper. (TeX with harvmac, 13 pages.)

References in corpus (4)

• Classical Equations for Quantum Systems
• On the Consistent Histories Approach to Quantum Mechanics
• Properties of Consistent Histories
• Approximate and Exact Consistency of Histories

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