Abstract
A “decoherent” measurement is a dephasing plus tracing out plus triorthogonal decomposition. Dephasing can happen any time when a small system is coupled with a large reservoir. It is in principle reversible. But in order to have a measurement we also need the tracing out and the triorthogonal decomposition. The first requirement is observation-dependent (because environment plus apparatus plus object system eventually remain in a superposition). But the second one is an irreversible and irrelative change. In the presence of three “systems” the basis degeneracy problem disappears, i.e. there can be diagonalization only relative to an observable (the measured one).
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Auletta, G. Decoherence and Triorthogonal Decomposition. International Journal of Theoretical Physics 43, 2263–2274 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1023/B:IJTP.0000049025.34503.e8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/B:IJTP.0000049025.34503.e8