Shearing Off the Tree: Emerging Branch Structure and Born's Rule in an Equilibrated Multiverse

TL;DR

This paper challenges the traditional view of the many worlds interpretation by showing that most branches exhibit interference effects, and only those consistent with Born's rule remain decoherent, indicating more complex structure in the multiverse.

Contribution

The study provides numerical evidence that the multiverse tree has more intricate structure, with only Born's rule consistent histories remaining decoherent after extensive interference.

Findings

Most branches show strong interference effects for histories of many times.

Histories sampling frequencies according to Born's rule remain decoherent.

The multiverse tree has more structure than previously thought.

Abstract

Within the many worlds interpretation (MWI) it is believed that, as time passes on, the linearity of the Schr\"odinger equation together with decoherence generate an exponentially growing tree of branches where "everything happens", provided the branches are defined for a decohering basis. By studying an example, using exact numerical diagonalization of the Schr\"odinger equation to compute the decoherent histories functional, we find that this picture needs revision. Our example shows decoherence for histories defined at a few times, but a significant fraction (often the vast majority) of branches shows strong interference effects for histories of many times. In a sense made precise below, the histories independently sample an equilibrated quantum process, and, remarkably, we find that only histories that sample frequencies in accordance with Born's rule remain decoherent. Our results suggest that there is more structure in the many worlds tree than previously anticipated, influencing arguments of both proponents and opponents of the MWI.