Is Discretized Space the Key to Understanding Quantum Decoherence?

In summary, there are various research programs that suggest a discrete structure for spacetime, but none of them have been fully developed or tested experimentally. However, many of these approaches agree on the existence of some form of discreteness, and some may have similar theoretical predictions. This topic is still being debated and discussed in the scientific community.
  • #1
Pythagorean
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My QM is undergrad level and I don't keep up on recent breakthroughs. I'm curious what the status is on space structure.

This article (Mecklenburg, 2011) uses the phrase "hidden substructure"

http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v106/i11/e116803

is it similar to Zurek, 2001? "structure on the sub-planck scale"

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v412/n6848/abs/412712a0.html

Q:

do these articles a) give evidence for discretized space, and b) point to implications of discretized space for decoherence?
 
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  • #2
I do not know these two approaches you are referring to, but there are several different research programs pointing towards a "discrete" spacetime structure. They differ regarding the "type of discreteness", e.g. discreteness of area spectrum like angular momentum in QM, discreteness like in crystalls, ... All these "quantum gravity" approaches are far from complete and none of them provides any insight that could be seriously tested experimentally today. But many approches agree that there is some kind of discreteness and some of them indeed make similar theoretical predictions.

I guess this should better be discussed in the "becond forum"
 

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