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Related papers: A quantum solution to the arrow-of-time dilemma

200 papers

The puzzle of the thermodynamic arrow of time reduces to the question of how the universe could have had lower entropy in the past. I show that no special entropy lowering mechanism (or fluctuation) is necessary. As a consequence of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-05-13 L. S. Schulman

I argue that both digital and analog information are important in the foundations of quantum physics. If it is possible for information present in one system to become present in others without being erased in the original system I will say…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2011-02-16 Alan Forrester

The nature of time has beguiled philosophers for nearly three millennia. There are myriad types of time including cosmological time, biological time, psychological time, physical time, historical time, and even theological time. My brief…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2021-07-20 Stephen Boughn

In the understanding of the fundamental interactions, the origin of an arrow of time is viewed as problematic. However, quantum field theory has an arrow of causality, which tells us which time direction is the past lightcone and which is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-10-15 John F. Donoghue , Gabriel Menezes

Quantum physics, despite its observables being intrinsically of a probabilistic nature, does not have a quantum entropy assigned to them. We propose a quantum entropy that quantify the randomness of a pure quantum state via a conjugate pair…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-10-05 Davi Geiger , Zvi M. Kedem

This thesis addresses two major problems in the philosophy of physics. The first is how to identify the minimal physical content of a theory; that is, what features of a theory are truly needed to make predictions, and what can be removed…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2025-09-19 Sean Gryb

While the microscopic laws of physics are often symmetric under time reversal, most natural processes that we observe are not. The emergent asymmetry between typical and time-reversed processes is referred to as the arrow of time. In…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-12-23 Luis Pedro García-Pintos , Yi-Kai Liu , Alexey V. Gorshkov

We discuss the arrow of time in terms of the increase of correlations between the system and its environment. Here we show that the existence of the arrow of time, based on deleting correlations, requires a strict absence of initial…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2016-05-04 Vlatko Vedral

The second law of thermodynamics points to the existence of an `arrow of time', along which entropy only increases. This arises despite the time-reversal symmetry (TRS) of the microscopic laws of nature. Within quantum theory, TRS underpins…

Strongly Correlated Electrons · Physics 2021-04-13 Max McGinley , Nigel R. Cooper

Scientists continue to wrestle with the enigma of time. Is time a dynamic or a fundamental property of spacetime? Why does it have an arrow pointing from past to future? Why are physical laws time-symmetric in a universe with broken…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2009-09-15 L. Mersini-Houghton

Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modelling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motion and on the strength of the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2017-07-25 Hauret Clementine , Magain Pierre , Biernaux Judith

The second law of thermodynamics states that for a thermally isolated system entropy never decreases. Most physical processes we observe in nature involve variations of macroscopic quantities over spatial and temporal scales much larger…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2017-02-20 Paolo Glorioso , Hong Liu

I acknowledge a flaw in the paper "A quantum solution to the arrow of time dilemma": as pointed out by Jennings and Rudolph, (classical) mutual information is not an appropriate measure of information. This can be traced back to the quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-12-31 Lorenzo Maccone

Fundamental laws of physics are symmetric under time reversal ($T$) symmetry, but the $T$ symmetry is strongly broken in the macroscopic world. In this Perspective, I review $T$ symmetry breaking frameworks: \textit{second law of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-12-06 Mahendra K. Verma

In this paper, we investigate an important issue addressed by several approaches to quantum cosmology, like that based on loop quantum gravity and string theory: the existence of an arrow of time driving the cosmological evolution according…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2026-03-25 Carlos Silva , Renan Aragão , Francisco A. Brito

If an asymmetry in time does not arise from the fundamental dynamical laws of physics, it may be found in special boundary conditions. The argument normally goes that since thermodynamic entropy in the past is lower than in the future…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-07-23 Jim Al-Khalili , Eddy Keming Chen

Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modeling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motions and on the strength of the…

Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-11 Pierre Magain , Clémentine Hauret

The first paper: We describe principles of new cybernetics and use these principles for resolution of basic physical paradoxes. It demonstrates universality of the principles of new cybernetics. The second paper: recent letter by Maccone…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-03-13 Oleg Kupervasser , Dimitri Laikov

Irreversibility is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. While microscopic physical laws are perfectly reversible, macroscopic average behavior has a preferred direction of time. According to the second law of thermodynamics, this…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-04-12 T. B. Batalhao , A. M. Souza , R. S. Sarthour , I. S. Oliveira , M. Paternostro , E. Lutz , R. M. Serra

We investigate implications of decoherence for quantum systems which are classically chaotic. We show that, in open systems, the rate of von Neumann entropy production quickly reaches an asymptotic value which is: (i) independent of the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2011-08-04 Wojciech Hubert Zurek , Juan Pablo Paz