About the relation between pilot wave beables and decoherence

TL;DR

This paper challenges Wallace's thesis by showing that decoherence can recover quantum predictions without beables being decoherence-preferred, and suggests a natural connection when system decomposition aligns with beables.

Contribution

It proves that negligible overlap between macroscopic states occurs without beables being decoherence-preferred, countering Wallace's thesis, and explores the connection when system decomposition aligns with beables.

Findings

Overlap between macroscopic states becomes negligible without beables being decoherence-preferred.

Decoherence can recover quantum predictions independently of beables.

Negligible overlap persists when system decomposition is based on beables.

Abstract

Motivated by Wallace's thesis that pilot wave beables should be decoherence-preferred to recover quantum predictions, we consider the relation between pilot wave beables and decoherence. We prove that without any connection between beables and decoherence the overlap between macrcopic states becomes negligible. This is sufficient to recover quantum predictions, so that Wallace's thesis has to be rejected. A natural connection between decoherence and beables appears if the decomposition into systems used by decoherence is based on the beables. While our first result becomes inapplicable in this case, we present evidence that the overlap becomes negligible too.