The classification of decoherence functionals: An analog of Gleason’s theorem

Gell-Mann and Hartle have proposed a significant generalization of quantum theory with a scheme whose basic ingredients are ‘‘histories’’ and decoherence functionals. Within this scheme it is natural to identify the space 𝒰𝒫 of propositions about histories with an orthoalgebra or lattice. This raises the important problem of classifying the decoherence functionals in the case where 𝒰𝒫 is the lattice of projectors 𝒫(𝒱) in some Hilbert space 𝒱; in effect, one seeks the history analog of Gleason’s famous theorem in standard quantum theory. In the present article the solution to this problem for the case where 𝒱 is finite dimensional is presented. In particular, it is shown that every decoherence functional d(α,β), α,β∈𝒫(𝒱) can be written in the form d(α,β)=tr𝒱⊗𝒱(α⊗βX) for some operator X on the tensor-product space 𝒱⊗𝒱.