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1 results

  • 2 - Discrete Events from Repeatability: “Quantum Jumps” and Wavepacket Collapse

  • from Part I - Foundations
  • Wojciech Hubert Zurek, Los Alamos National Laboratory
  • Book:
    Decoherence and Quantum Darwinism
    Published online:
    06 March 2025
    Print publication:
    13 March 2025, pp 17-43

  • Summary

    Chapter 2 shows how the discreteness that sets the stage for discontinuous quantum jumps between a restricted set of states is a consequence of the symmetry breaking that resolves the tension between the unitarity of quantum evolutions, and repeatable information transfer (the essence of quantum Darwinism, the subject of Chapters 7 and 8). Chapter 2 shows that, while the quantum superposition principle declares that every superposition is an equally legal quantum state, repeatability restricts states that can be recorded (found out) multiple times to an orthogonal set determined by the unitary dynamics of the process responsible for the repeated information transfer (i.e., for amplification). Such states persist and can imprint the evidence of their continued presence in other systems, e.g., on the subsystems of the environment. They become the elements of objective reality—e.g., outcomes of the measurements we perceive. Moreover, Chapter 2 motivates the need for the derivation of the probabilities of measurements (to be carried out in Chapter 3).