No Quantum Process Can Explain the Existence of the Preferred Basis: Decoherence Is Not Universal

Abstract

Environment induced decoherence, and other quantum processes, have been proposed in the literature to explain the apparent spontaneous selection—out of the many mathematically eligible bases—of a privileged measurement basis that corresponds to what we actually observe. This paper describes such processes, and demonstrates that—contrary to common belief—no such process can actually lead to a preferred basis in general. The key observation is that environment induced decoherence implicitly assumes a prior independence of the observed system, the observer and the environment. However, such independence cannot be guaranteed, and we show that environment induced decoherence does not succeed in establishing a preferred measurement basis in general. We conclude that the existence of the preferred basis must be postulated in quantum mechanics, and that changing the basis for a measurement is, and must be, described as an actual physical process.