Wavefunction branching: when you can’t tell pure states from mixed states

Quantum 9, 1670 (2025).

https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2025-03-25-1670

We propose a definition of wavefunction “branchings”: quantum superpositions which can’t be feasibly distinguished from the corresponding mixed state, even under time evolution. Our definition is largely independent of interpretations, requiring only that it takes many more local gates to swap branches than to distinguish them. We give several examples of states admitting such branch decompositions. Under our definition, we argue that attempts to get relative-phase information between branches will fail without frequent active error correction, that branches are effectively the opposite of good error-correcting codes, that branches effectively only grow further apart in time under natural evolution, that branches tend to absorb spatial entanglement, that branching is stronger in the presence of conserved quantities, and that branching implies effective irreversibility. Identifying these branch decompositions in many-body quantum states could shed light on the emergence of classicality, provide a metric for experimental tests at the quantum/ classical boundary, and allow for longer numerical time evolution simulations. We see this work as a generalization of the basic ideas of environmentally-induced decoherence to situations with no clear system/ environment split.