from Part II - Decoherence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2025
Chapter 5 explores the consequences of decoherence. We live in a Universe that is fundamentally quantum. Yet, our everyday world appears to be resolutely classical. The aim of Chapter 5 is to discuss how preferred classical states, and, more generally, classical physics, arise, as an excellent approximation, on a macroscopic level of a quantum Universe. We show why quantum theory results in the familiar “classical reality” in open quantum systems, that is, systems interacting with their environments. We shall see how and why, and to what extent, quantum theory accounts for our classical perceptions. We shall not complete this task here—a more detailed analysis of how the information is acquired by observers is needed for that, and this task will be taken up in Part III of the book. Moreover, Chapter 5 shows that not just Newtonian physics but also equilibrium thermodynamics follows from the same symmetries of entanglement that led to Born’s rule (in Chapter 3).
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