1996/05/31 by Oliver Rudolph
Arts and Humanities · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Philosophy and History of Science #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/1.531709
published as J.Math.Phys. 37 (1996) 5368-5379 · LaTeX 2.09 version replaced by LaTeX2e version, minor changes
arxiv created 1996/06/07 · openalex publication_date 1996/11/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A formulation of the consistent histories approach to quantum mechanics in terms of generalized observables (POV measures) and effect operators is provided. The usual notion of ‘‘history’’ is generalized to the notion of ‘‘effect history.’’ The space of effect histories carries the structure of a D-poset. Recent results of J. D. Maitland Wright imply that every decoherence functional defined for ordinary histories can be uniquely extended to a bi-additive decoherence functional on the space of effect histories. Omnès’ logical interpretation is generalized to the present context. The result of this work considerably generalizes and simplifies the earlier formulation of the consistent effect histories approach to quantum mechanics communicated in a previous work of this author.