Redundancy of einselected information in quantum Darwinism: The irrelevance of irrelevant environment bits [Separating the wheat from the chaff: Redundancy and relevant information in quantum Darwinism]

Journal Article · Wed Mar 08 00:00:00 EST 2017 · Physical Review A

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.95.030101· OSTI ID:1459628

Zwolak, Michael ^[1]; Zurek, Wojciech H. ^[2]

---

1. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
2. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)

Here, the objective, classical world emerges from the underlying quantum substrate via the proliferation of redundant copies of selected information into the environment, which acts as a communication channel, transmitting that information to observers. These copies are independently accessible, allowing many observers to reach consensus about the state of a quantum system via its imprints in the environment. Quantum Darwinism recognizes that the redundancy of information is thus central to the emergence of objective reality in the quantum world. However, in addition to the “quantum system of interest,” there are many other systems “of no interest” in the Universe that can imprint information on the common environment. There is therefore a danger that the information of interest will be diluted with irrelevant bits, suppressing the redundancy responsible for objectivity. We show that mixing of the relevant (the “wheat”) and irrelevant (the “chaff”) bits of information makes little quantitative difference to the redundancy of the information of interest. Thus, we demonstrate that it does not matter whether one separates the wheat (relevant information) from the (irrelevant) chaff: The large redundancy of the relevant information survives dilution, providing evidence of the objective, effectively classical world.

• Research Organization: Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program
• Grant/Contract Number: AC52-06NA25396
• OSTI ID: 1459628
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1346267
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-16-27085; PLRAAN; TRN: US1901585
• Journal Information: Physical Review A, Vol. 95, Issue 3; ISSN 2469-9926
• Publisher: American Physical Society (APS)
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS
Atomic and Nuclear Physics