{
  "annotation_id": "108ebf6d-e31c-44d4-9834-354348011925",
  "date_created": "2026-03-02T18:02:45.085000Z",
  "date_modified": "2026-03-02T18:02:45.085000Z",
  "file_hash": "708dc03142fc4eb592520b30f67704b5b587832bdea9dbaab1c52bfc9f6f7cc8",
  "private": false,
  "record": {
    "abstract": "We investigate the idea that decoherence is connected with the storage of\ninformation about the decohering system somewhere in the universe. The known\nconnection between decoherence of histories and the existence of records is\nextended from the case of pure initial states to mixed states. Records may\nstill exist but are necessarily imperfect. We formulate an\ninformation-theoretic conjecture about decoherence due to an environment: the\nnumber of bits required to describe a set of decoherent histories is\napproximately equal to the number of bits of information thrown away to the\nenvironment in the coarse-graining process. This idea is verified in a simple\nmodel consisting of a particle coupled to an environment that can store only\none bit of information. We explore the decoherence and information storage in\nthe quantum Brownian motion model. It is shown that the variables that the\nenvironment naturally measures and stores information about are the Fourier\ncomponents of the function $x(t)$ (describing the particle trajectory). The\nrecords storing the information about the Fourier modes are the positions and\nmomenta of the environmental oscillators at the final time. Decoherence is\npossible even if there is only one oscillator in the environment. The\ninformation count of the histories and records in the environment add up\naccording to our conjecture. These results give quantitative content to the\nidea that decoherence is related to ``information lost\u0027\u0027.",
    "arxiv_id": "quant-ph/9902008",
    "authors": [
      "J. J. Halliwell"
    ],
    "categories": [
      "quant-ph",
      "gr-qc"
    ],
    "doi": "10.1103/PhysRevD.60.105031",
    "journal_ref": "Phys. Rev. D 60, 105031 (1999)",
    "title": "Somewhere in the Universe: Where is the Information Stored When   Histories Decohere?",
    "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9902008"
  },
  "schema_id": "dorsal/arxiv",
  "source": {
    "execution_id": "00021b29-10cd-49a7-9e17-b6344955e1bf",
    "id": "arXiv Dataset IDs",
    "type": "Model",
    "variant": "snapshot-2026-03-01",
    "version": "0.1.0"
  },
  "user_id": 1000002
}