Probabilities, Decohering Histories, and the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Robert B. Griffiths

Roland L. Omnes

Eric D. Chisolm

Guan Hong

The origin and substance of a new interpretation of quantum mechanics——“decohering histories interpretation”——are introduced. The implications of this progress on the development of quantum theory are discussed.

Arthur I. Fine

Murray Gell‐Mann, James B. Hartle

We continue our efforts to understand, within the framework of the quantum mechanics of the universe as a whole, the quasiclassical realm of familiar experience as a feature emergent from the Hamiltonian of the elementary particles and the initial condition of the universe. Quantum mechanics assigns probabilities to exhaustive sets of alternative decoherent histories of the universe. We introduce and define the notion of strong decoherence. We replace the notion of maximal sets of alternative decohering histories by defining the more useful concept of "full" sets of alternative strongly decohering histories. These full sets fall into equivalence classes each of which is characterized by a basis in Hilbert space. Finally we describe our continuing efforts to find measures of classicality --- measures that could be applied to such full sets of alternative strongly decohering so as to characterize a quasiclassical realm.