Paper detail

Emergence of the Classical from within the Quantum Universe

Decoherence shows how the openness of quantum systems -- interaction with their environment -- suppresses flagrant manifestations of quantumness. Einselection accounts for the emergence of preferred quasi-classical pointer states. Quantum Darwinism goes beyond decoherence. It posits that the information acquired by the monitoring environment responsible for decoherence is disseminated, in many copies, in the environment, and thus becomes accessible to observers. This indirect nature of the acquisition of information by observers who use the environment as a communication channel is the mechanism through which objective classical reality emerges from the quantum substrate: States of the systems of interest are not subjected to direct measurements (hence, not perturbed) by the agents acquiring information about them. Thus, they can exist unaffected by the information gained by observers.