Decoherence: a closed-system approach

The aim of this paper is to review a new perspective about decoherence, according to which formalisms originally devised to deal just with closed or open systems can be subsumed under a closed-system approach that generalizes the traditional account of the phenomenon. This new viewpoint dissolves certain conceptual difficulties of the orthodox open-system approach but, at the same time, shows that the openness of the quantum system is not the essential ingredient for decoherence, as commonly claimed. Moreover, when the behavior of a decoherent system is described from a closed-system perspective, the account of decoherence turns out to be more general than that supplied by the open-system approach, and the quantum-to-classical transition defines unequivocally the realm of classicality by identifying the observables with classical-like behavior.Fil: Fortin, Sebastian Ezequiel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio(i); Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Cs.exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Fisica; ArgentinaFil: Lombardi, Olimpia Iris. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Cs.exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Castagnino, Mario Alberto G. J.. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Cs.exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Fisica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio(i); Argentin