The Correspondence Principle History and Present State

Insok Ko

Adam J. Makowski

Several formulations of the correspondence principle, including both the historical and contemporary ones, are presented and critically reviewed.

C.J. Fraza

“There was rarely in the history of physics a comprehensive theory which owed so much to one principle as quantum mechanics owed to Bohr's correspondence principle”

Wladyslaw A. Krajewski

R. M. Angelo

The problem of deterministic predictions for individual systems is investigated in both quantum and Newtonian theories. In this context, the break time defined originally in Ehrenfest's work [P. Ehrenfest, Z. Phys. 45, 455 (1927)] emerges as the characteristic time scale of determinism, i.e., the one beyond which both theories miss their practical predictability for a single history system. Contrary to the claim of recent works, these results recover the importance of the Ehrenfest time in the understanding of the quantum-classical transition. As a consequence, the problem of breakdown in correspondence principle for closed systems turns out to be nonessential.