Related papers: Vacuum Structure and the Arrow of Time
We argue that an understanding of the Arrow of Time is urgently required if recent string-theoretic ideas about cosmology are to be made to function. In the string Landscape, the nucleation of baby universes is postulated to "populate" the…
Time-like linear dilaton triggers, at the classical level, the creation of closed folded strings at an instant. We show that in cosmology these instant folded strings induce negative pressure at no energy cost. Hence they seem to allow an…
Deutsch and Aguirre have recently shown that the solutions of certain dynamical systems typically contain a point of minimum size that they identify as an entropy minimum and from which the size and entropy increase to infinity in both…
It is generally believed that a cosmological arrow of time must be associated with entropy production. Indeed, in his seminal work on cyclic cosmology, Tolman introduced a viscous fluid in order to make successive expansion/contraction…
According to statistical mechanics, micro-states of an isolated physical system (say, a gas in a box) at time $t_0$ in a given macro-state of less-than-maximal entropy typically evolve in such a way that the entropy at time $t$ increases…
I address the question whether the origin of the observed arrow of time can be derived from quantum cosmology. After a general discussion of entropy in cosmology and some numerical estimates, I give a brief introduction into quantum…
Inflation allows the problem of the Arrow of time to be understood as a question about the structure of spacetime: why was the intrinsic curvature of the earliest spatial sections so much better behaved than it might have been? This is…
A model quantum cosmology is used to illustrate how arrows of time emerge in a universe governed by a time-neutral dynamical theory constrained by time asymmetric initial and final boundary conditions represented by initial and final…
Depending on the type and arrangement of metastable vacua in the theory, initial conditions in a de Sitter vacuum with arbitrarily large entropy can be compatible with the observed arrow of time, if the causal patch or related measures are…
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…
In this paper we address the problem of the arrow of time from a cosmological point of view, rejecting the traditional entropic approach that defines the future direction of time as the direction of the entropy increase: from our…
The paper discusses recent proposals by Carroll and Chen, as well as Barbour, Koslowski, and Mercati to explain the (thermodynamic) arrow of time without a Past Hypothesis, i.e., the assumption of a special (low-entropy) initial state of…
The laws of Physics are time-reversible, making no qualitative distinction between the past and the future -- yet we can only go towards the future. This apparent contradiction is known as the "arrow of time problem". Its current resolution…
Quantum gravity, the initial low entropy state of the Universe, and the problem of time are interlocking puzzles. In this article, we address the origin of the arrow of time from a cosmological perspective motivated by a novel approach to…
In this lecture I make some educated guesses, about the landscape of string theory vacua. Based on the recent work of a number of authors, it seems plausible that the lanscape is unimaginably large and diverse. Whether we like it or not,…
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…
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…
This paper extends the work of a previous paper [arXiv:1208.2611] on the flow of time, to consider the origin of the arrow of time. It proposes that a `past condition' cascades down from cosmological to micro scales, being realized in many…
This paper investigates the influence of extra dimensions on the nature of the arrow of time. We demonstrate that the observed arrow of time can be explained by the monotonic growth of the multidimensional manifold's volume. Unlike…
The existence of a thermodynamic arrow of time in the present universe implies that the initial state of the observable portion of our universe at (or near) the ``big bang'' must have been very ``special''. We argue that it is not plausible…