Decoherence, Branching, and the Born Rule in a Mixed-State Everettian Multiverse

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2023-07
Main Authors: Chua, Eugene Y S, Chen, Eddy Keming
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decision theory
Foundations
Quantum mechanics
Wave functions
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary: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 the standard Everettian justifications 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.
ISSN:2331-8422