Redundant Information from Thermal Illumination: Quantum Darwinism in Scattered Photons

We study quantum Darwinism, the redundant recording of information about the preferred states of a decohering system by its environment, for an object illuminated by a blackbody. We calculate the quantum mutual information between the object and its photon environment for blackbodies that cover an arbitrary section of the sky. In particular, we demonstrate that more extended sources have a reduced ability to create redundant information about the system, in agreement with previous evidence that initial mixedness of an environment slows---but does not stop---the production of records. We also show that the qualitative results are robust for more general initial states of the system.