bibkey: zurek2003decoherence authors: Wojciech H. Zurek year: 2003 title: Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical doi: 10.1103/RevModPhys.75.715 claim: Environmental monitoring suppresses coherence between selected pointer states. strata_touched:

• D5/S3/Quantum/Decoherence
• D5/S3/Quantum/QubitWitnesses license: citation-only triage: anchor

Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical

Wojciech H. Zurek reviews environment-induced decoherence and pointer-state selection. It anchors the standard phase-damping skeleton formalized here: diagonal populations are preserved while off-diagonal coherence is attenuated. The composition and fixed-point declarations in D5/S3/Quantum/Decoherence record two algebraic consequences of that stipulated map.

The Lean module assumes a real phase-damping map and proves its finite iterate algebraically. It does not derive that map from a Hamiltonian, identify the repository ledger with a physical environment, equate bookkeeping with decoherence, or make the address principle an einselection law.

Search log

• 2026-07-17: Queried "Decoherence, einselection, and the quantum origins of the classical" DOI 10.1103/RevModPhys.75.715 through NyxID/Tavily. APS returned Wojciech Hubert Zurek, the exact title, Rev. Mod. Phys. 75, 715, publication on 22 May 2003, and the DOI. arXiv quant-ph/0105127 returned the same title and journal reference.
• 2026-07-17: Queried Zurek decoherence off diagonal coherence pointer states diagonal populations phase damping. Original-review excerpts state that pointer states remain untouched while their superpositions lose phase coherence. INSPIRE similarly states that environmental monitoring destroys coherence between pointer states.
• 2026-07-17: No search result was used to attribute the observer source’s ledger-specific causal claims to Zurek. Those clauses remain unresolved.
• 2026-07-18: Crossref returned Wojciech H. Zurek, the exact review title, publication date 22 May 2003, and DOI 10.1103/RevModPhys.75.715. The arXiv record quant-ph/0105127v3 independently matched the title, author, journal reference, and DOI.
• 2026-07-18: Checked the arXiv PDF directly. The review states that einselected pointer states are stable, that monitored open-system states diagonalize in the pointer basis, and that off-diagonal terms are controlled by an environment-overlap decoherence factor. This supports the stipulated channel skeleton, not the observer atom’s ledger/environment identification.
• 2026-07-18: The APS DOI target returned HTTP 403 to automated retrieval. No content conclusion was drawn from that failed route; the matching arXiv version supplied the successful original-text check.

Verified locator

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.75.715
• APS: https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/RevModPhys.75.715
• arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0105127