The Program of Decoherence: Ideas and Concepts

Philippe Blanchard, Erich Joos, Domenico Giulini +2 more

Maximilian Schlosshauer, Kristian Camilleri

Niels Bohr famously insisted on the indispensability of what he termed "classical concepts." In the context of the decoherence program, on the other hand, it has become fashionable to talk about the "dynamical emergence of classicality" from the quantum formalism alone. Does this mean that decoherence challenges Bohr's dictum -- for example, that classical concepts do not need to be assumed but can be derived? In this paper, we'll try to shed some light down the murky waters where formalism and philosophy mingle. To begin, we'll clarify the notion of classicality in the decoherence description. We'll then discuss Bohr's and Heisenberg's takes on the quantum-classical problem and reflect on the different meanings of the terms "classicality" and "classical concepts" in the writings of Bohr and his followers. This analysis will allow us to put forward some tentative suggestions for how we may better understand the relation between decoherence-induced classicality and Bohr's classical concepts.

Claus Kiefer, Erich Joos

Maximilian Schlosshauer, Kristian Camilleri, Andrei Yu. Khrennikov +3 more

Niels Bohr famously insisted on the indispensability of what he termed “classical concepts.” In the context of the decoherence program, on the other hand, it has become fashionable to talk about the “dynamical emergence of classicality” from the quantum formalism alone. Does this mean that decoherence challenges Bohr’s dictum—for example, that classical concepts do not need to be assumed but can be derived? In this paper we’ll try to shed some light down the murky waters where formalism and philosophy cohabitate. To begin, we’ll clarify the notion of classicality in the decoherence description. We’ll then discuss Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s take on the quantum—classical problem and reflect on different meanings of the terms “classicality” and “classical concepts” in the writings of Bohr and his followers. This analysis will allow us to put forward some tentative suggestions for how we may better understand the relation between decoherence‐induced classicality and Bohr’s classical concepts.

Mario Castagnino, Sebastián Fortín

There are many formalisms to describe quantum decoherence. However, many of them give a non general and ad hoc definition of "pointer basis" or "moving preferred basis", and this fact is a problem for the decoherence program. In this paper we will consider quantum systems under a general theoretical framework for decoherence and we will present a tentative definition of the moving preferred basis. These ideas are implemented in a well-known open system model. The obtained decoherence and the relaxation times are defined and compared with those of the literature for the Lee- Friedrichs model.