TEMPORALLY CONTINUOUS APPROXIMATION OF TEMPORALLY QUANTIZED STATISTICAL OPERATORS

Any temporally-quantized statistical operator characterizing a dynamic ally isolated and localized non-relativistic quantum system which evol ves strictly irreversibly can be approximated guile well for many purp oses by one in which its intrinsic discrete overall time lapses are me rely replaced by an appropriate single continuous temporal parameter. Each such approximation differs very little from its original because of a small total squared difference of the two which is found to exist at all times. It is readily produced from any statistical operator wh ich is a solution of the pertinent von Neuman's equation of motion. Th e approximation satisfies a temporal differential equation similar in some respects to that ascribed conventionally to a subsystem interacti ng with the remainder of an otherwise isolated quantum system and to t hat proposed recently imposing an intrinsic decoherence on the evoluti onary behavior of such systems, but differs fundamentally from both. S everal examples illustrate the applicability and limitations of the ap proximation.