Abstract
We study the issue of decoherence and dissipation in the wave function of the Universe for a Bianchi type-I universe with classical and quantum matter. We obtain a coarse-grained description by tracing over the matter degrees of freedom. Provided that for small universes the wave function of the universe is concentrated on a neighborhood of the isotropic configuration, then the coarse-grained density matrix of the universe will show an even more marked peak around isotropy for large universes. In this sense we can say that, while decoherence makes the reduced density matrix of the universe diagonal, dissipation causes the universe to be isotropic with a high probability for large radii.
- Received 5 July 1990
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.43.2498
©1991 American Physical Society
