Many Histories
This chapter begins by discussing a sense in which simple interference effects are destroyed when a system's environment becomes correlated with its state — a phenomenon called decoherence. It then considers three approaches in interpreting the said phenomenon. It then argues that environmental decoherence does not by itself explain determinate records. Next, it explains Murray Gell–Mann and James Hartle's (GH's) many-histories approach, which provides two rules — one rule that tells what sets of alternative histories of the universe can be assigned approximate probabilities, and another rule that tells what these probabilities are. The GH approach describes these rules in the context of the Heisenberg picture. This chapter also presents some problems in the many-histories approach.
Keywords: Murray Gell–Mann, James Hartle, many-histories approach, decoherence, determinate records, probabilities, Heisenberg picture
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