Objectivity Through State Broadcasting: The Origins Of Quantum Darwinism

TL;DR

This paper establishes spectrum broadcasting as the fundamental process enabling objective classical states from quantum systems, addressing limitations of Quantum Darwinism and providing a more physical explanation for the quantum-to-classical transition.

Contribution

It proves spectrum broadcasting as the necessary and sufficient condition for objectivity, extending decoherence theory and clarifying the physical process behind classical emergence.

Findings

Spectrum broadcasting is essential for objective state existence.

Quantum Darwinism is a special case of spectrum broadcasting.

Application to dielectric sphere illuminated by photons demonstrates the concept.

Abstract

Quantum mechanics is one of the most successful theories, correctly predicting huge class of physical phenomena. Ironically, in spite of all its successes, there is a notorious problem: how does Nature create a ''bridge'' from fragile quanta to the robust, objective world of everyday experience? It is now commonly accepted that the most promising approach is the Decoherence Theory, based on the system-environment paradigm. To explain the observed redundancy and objectivity of information in the classical realm, Zurek proposed to divide the environment into independent fractions and argued that each of them carries a nearly complete classical information about the system. This Quantum Darwinism model has nevertheless some serious drawbacks: i) the entropic information redundancy is motivated by a priori purely classical reasoning; ii) there is no answer to the basic question: what physical process makes the transition from quantum description to classical objectivity possible? Here we prove that the necessary and sufficient condition for objective existence of a state is the spectrum broadcasting process, which, in particular, implies Quantum Darwinism. We first show it in general, using multiple environments paradigm, a suitable definition of objectivity, and Bohr's notion of non-disturbance, and then on the emblematic example for Decoherence Theory: a dielectric sphere illuminated by photons. We also apply Perron-Frobenius Theorem to show a faithful, ''decoherence-free'' form of broadcasting. We suggest that the spectrum broadcasting might be one of the foundational properties of Nature, which opens a ''window'' for life processes.