Decoherence, Branching, and the Born Rule in a Mixed-State Everettian Multiverse
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2023
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| _version_ | 1866916692000505856 |
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| author | Chua, Eugene Y. S. Chen, Eddy Keming |
| author_facet | Chua, Eugene Y. S. Chen, Eddy Keming |
| contents | In Everettian quantum mechanics, justifications for the Born rule appeal to self-locating uncertainty or decision theory. Such justifications have focused exclusively on a pure-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a wave function. Recent works in quantum foundations suggest that it is viable to consider a mixed-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a (mixed-state) density matrix. Here, we develop the conceptual foundations for decoherence and branching in a mixed-state multiverse, and extend arguments for the Born rule to this setting. This extended framework provides a unification of 'classical' and 'quantum' probabilities, and additional theoretical benefits, for the Everettian picture. |
| format | Preprint |
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arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2307_13218 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Decoherence, Branching, and the Born Rule in a Mixed-State Everettian Multiverse Chua, Eugene Y. S. Chen, Eddy Keming Quantum Physics History and Philosophy of Physics In Everettian quantum mechanics, justifications for the Born rule appeal to self-locating uncertainty or decision theory. Such justifications have focused exclusively on a pure-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a wave function. Recent works in quantum foundations suggest that it is viable to consider a mixed-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a (mixed-state) density matrix. Here, we develop the conceptual foundations for decoherence and branching in a mixed-state multiverse, and extend arguments for the Born rule to this setting. This extended framework provides a unification of 'classical' and 'quantum' probabilities, and additional theoretical benefits, for the Everettian picture. |
| title | Decoherence, Branching, and the Born Rule in a Mixed-State Everettian Multiverse |
| topic | Quantum Physics History and Philosophy of Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.13218 |