Unitarity restoration in the presence of closed timelike curves
- 15 May 1995
- journal article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review D
- Vol. 51 (10) , 5707-5715
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevd.51.5707
Abstract
A proposal is made for a mathematically unambiguous treatment of evolution in the presence of closed timelike curves. In constrast to other proposals for handling the naively nonunitary evolution that is often present in such situations, this proposal is causal, linear in the initial density matrix and preserves probability. It provides a physically reasonable interpretation of invertible nonunitary evolution by redefining the final Hilbert space so that the evolution is unitary or equivalently by removing the nonunitary part of the evolution operator using a polar decomposition.Comment: LaTeX, 17pp, Revisions: Title change, expanded and clarified presentation of original proposal, esp. with regard to Heisenberg picture and remaining in original Hilbert spacKeywords
All Related Versions
This publication has 12 references indexed in Scilit:
- Unitarity and causality in generalized quantum mechanics for nonchronal spacetimesPhysical Review D, 1994
- Quantum canonical transformations. Physical equivalence of quantum theoriesPhysics Letters B, 1993
- Failure of unitarity for interacting fields on spacetimes with closed timelike curvesPhysical Review D, 1992
- Simple quantum systems in spacetimes with closed timelike curvesPhysical Review D, 1992
- Quantum field theory in spaces with closed timelike curvesPhysical Review D, 1992
- Quantum mechanics near closed timelike linesPhysical Review D, 1991
- Billiard balls in wormhole spacetimes with closed timelike curves: Classical theoryPhysical Review D, 1991
- The Cauchy problem for the scalar wave equation is well defined on a class of spacetimes with closed timelike curvesPhysical Review Letters, 1991
- Cauchy problem in spacetimes with closed timelike curvesPhysical Review D, 1990
- Wormholes, Time Machines, and the Weak Energy ConditionPhysical Review Letters, 1988