On 10/19/2019 6:56 PM, Alan Grayson wrote:
Sean says the decoherence time is 10^(-20) sec. So when the box is
closed, the cat is in a superposition of alive and dead during
that time interval, assuming the decay hasn't happened. If that's
the case, I don't see how decoherence solves the paradox, unless
we can assume an initial condition where the probability of one
component of the superposition, that the cat is dead, is zero.
Maybe this is the solution. What do you think? AG
Maybe this is an easier question; after decoherence, assuming the
radioactive source hasn't decayed, what is the wf of the cat? Is the
cat in a mixed state, alive or dead with some probabIlity for each? AG
You can't "assume the radioactive source hasn't decayed". The point
Schroedinger's thought experiment is that when the box is closed you
don't know whether or not it has decayed and so it is in a superposition
of decayed and not-decayed and the cat is correlated with these states,
so it is also in a superposition of dead and alive.
Brent
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