Redundant Records of the Past: Unifying Quantum Darwinism and Decoherent Histories
Abstract
There exist two different paradigms for records in isolated quantum systems: decoherent histories (which determines which past events leave formal records) and quantum Darwinism (which determines which current events get redundantly recorded). Neither one implies the other, and connections between the two are scarcely investigated. We unify quantum Darwinism and decoherent histories based on the insight that only redundant records about past events matter. The resulting framework of past redundancy encompasses quantum Darwinism when applied to events at the current time, and it implies the probability sum rule or decoherence of histories. The Bhattacharyya coefficient (or fidelity) plays an important role to establish this connection. Importantly, various examples show that past redundancy is a more widespread phenomenon than the fine-tuned models necessary for quantum Darwinism suggest. We thus arrive at a richer picture in which redundancy can be caused by mechanisms different from quantum Darwinism (such as macroevents or cascade structures), which emphasizes that redundancy is necessary but not sufficient for objectivity, and which, overall, allows to realistically investigate the question: how generic is redundancy in nature?
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BibTeX
@misc{strasberg2026redundant,
title = {{Redundant Records of the Past: Unifying Quantum Darwinism and Decoherent Histories}},
author = {Philipp Strasberg},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.09845},
eprint = {2610.09845},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09845},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Redundant Records of the Past: Unifying Quantum Darwinism and Decoherent Histories
AU - Philipp Strasberg
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/28
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.09845
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.09845
AB - There exist two different paradigms for records in isolated quantum systems: decoherent histories (which determines which past events leave formal records) and quantum Darwinism (which determines which current events get redundantly recorded). Neither one implies the other, and connections between the two are scarcely investigated. We unify quantum Darwinism and decoherent histories based on the insight that only redundant records about past events matter. The resulting framework of past redundancy encompasses quantum Darwinism when applied to events at the current time, and it implies the probability sum rule or decoherence of histories. The Bhattacharyya coefficient (or fidelity) plays an important role to establish this connection. Importantly, various examples show that past redundancy is a more widespread phenomenon than the fine-tuned models necessary for quantum Darwinism suggest. We thus arrive at a richer picture in which redundancy can be caused by mechanisms different from quantum Darwinism (such as macroevents or cascade structures), which emphasizes that redundancy is necessary but not sufficient for objectivity, and which, overall, allows to realistically investigate the question: how generic is redundancy in nature?
ER -