Quantum operations restricted by no faster-than-light communication principle and generic emergence of objectivity in position basis

Abstract

The emergence of the objective classical world from the quantum behavior of microscopic constituents is not fully understood. Models based on decoherence and the principle of quantum Darwinism, which attempt to provide such an explanation, require system-bath interactions in a preferred basis. Thus, the generic emergence of objectivity in the position basis, as observed in the real world remains unexplained. In this Letter, we present a no-go theorem based on the principle of no-faster-than-light communication, showing that interactions between internal degrees of freedom unavoidably cause system wave functions to branch in the position basis. We apply this result to a spin decoherence model to demonstrate that a generic thermal spin-1/2 bath redundantly records information about the position of a spin-1/2 particle. Notably, the model does not assume any preferred spin interaction. These findings represent a compelling demonstration of the generic emergence of objectivity in the position basis.