Quantum-to-classical transition and the emergence of trajectory level Darwinism with measurements distributed in time: a path integral approach

Abstract

We present a formulation for the emergence of classical dynamics in a quantum world using a path integral approach that incorporates continuous measurements. Our approach complements decoherence and coarse-grained quantum-to-classical transition frameworks. The path-integral formulation provides the joint statistics of a sequence of measurements, with each Feynman path picking up an additional random phase. Its magnitude is proportional to the measurement strength, and we give conditions under which the dominant contribution to the probability amplitude comes from trajectories near classical paths. Information proliferates across the environment, a key feature of quantum Darwinism, via plane-wave probe scattering. Extending to repeated measurements, we show that in the continuous limit each system trajectory picks up an additional phase due to momentum kicks from the probes--the origin of the back-action force. We provide conditions under which measurements yield enough ``which-path'' information while keeping the wave packet localized. This allows the quantum-to-classical transition to be described from individual measurement records, complementing the ensemble description from density matrices. We further show that the same scattering that decoheres a trajectory heats it, tying decoherence and measurement back-action together. This bounds how redundantly an individual classical trajectory can be recorded before back-action randomises it into Brownian motion. For a trapped particle, the ceiling is fixed by the resolution measured in units of the zero-point motion. It is not restrictive for macroscopic systems; it collapses to a single record where the semiclassical description of a trajectory fails, delimiting the regime in which objective classical trajectories exist. The deterministic-to-Brownian crossover is accessible in levitated optomechanics.