Quantum Darwinism

Schrodinger's Cat
According to quantum theory, the act of observing the world changes it. Without observations, the world remains in a state of superposition, where all potential exists -- when we observe it however, the superposition is lost and the world is reduced down to a single state. Why then does the world look more or less the same to all of us? If we're all observing the world and we're all changing it via our observations, why doesn't it appear different to all of us? Why do we agree on what something looks, tastes, smells, feels and sounds like? According to quantum theory, we shouldn't be agreeing at all. Not so says a group of physicists. Some states of a system, they say, get promoted above others via a process they call quantum darwinism. A phenomenon call decoherence collapses the many quantum states into a single state, which is stable and objective, and can stand up to scrutiny. Read a summary in this Nature article, or see the PDFs below for more information.
  • Decoherence, Einselection, and the Quantum Origins of the Classical [PDF]
  • Quantum Darwinism and Envariance [PDF]
  • Darwinish in Quantum Systems? [PDF]
  • A Simple Example of Quantum Darwinism [PDF]
  • Objective Properties from Subjective Quantum States [PDF]

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