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Related papers: The Quantum Mechanical Arrows of Time

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The second law of thermodynamics - the usual statement of the arrow of time - has been called the most fundamental law of physics. It is thus difficult to conceive that a single dynamical system could contain subsystems, in significant…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2007-05-23 L. S. Schulman

Quantum cosmology offers a unique stage to address questions of time related to its underlying (and perhaps truly quantum dynamical) meaning as well as its origin. Some of these issues can be analyzed with a general scheme of quantum…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2012-07-25 Martin Bojowald

This paper is a continuation of the paper gr-qc/0203045 and is devoted to the problem of the arrow of time. A deterministic past-directed dynamics is constructed, which results in the retrodictive universe. A future-directed dynamics of the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2007-05-23 Vladimir S. Mashkevich

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

We study a quantum theory with complex time parameter and non-Hermitian Hamiltonian structure. In this theory, the real part of the complex time is equal to `usual' physical time, whereas the imaginary one is proportional to inverse…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2007-05-23 Vadim V. Asadov , Oleg V. Kechkin

A generalized framework is developed which uses a set description instead of wavefunction to emphasize the role of the observer. Such a framework is found to be very effective in the study of the measurement problem and time's arrow.…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Zhen Wang

We demonstrate that in quantum many-body systems, local arrows of time can differ from the global time $t$ induced by Hamiltonian evolution. That is, within a quantum many-body system, the flow of time can be relative to each observer or by…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-14 Andrew G. Yates , Jordan Cotler , Nishad Maskara , Mikhail D. Lukin

We discuss how the classical notions of time and causal structure may emerge together with quantum-mechanical probabilities from a universal quantum state. For this, the process of decoherence between semiclassical branches is important.…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-06-24 Leonardo Chataignier , Claus Kiefer , Mritunjay Tyagi

We advance a new viewpoint on the connection between the the thermodynamical and cosmological arrows of time, which can be traced via the properties of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. We show that in the…

Astrophysics · Physics 2008-11-26 A. E. Allahverdyan , V. G. Gurzadyan

We discuss how quantum geometrodynamics, a conservative approach to quantum gravity, might explain the emergence of classical spacetime and, with it, the emergence of classical time and its arrow from the universal quantum state. This…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2024-11-19 Claus Kiefer , Leonardo Chataignier , Mritunjay Tyagi

Why time is a one-way corridor? What's the origin of the arrow of time? We attribute the thermodynamic arrow of time as the direction of increasing quantum state complexity. Inspired by the work of Nielsen, Susskind and Micadei, we checked…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-12-20 Xiao Dong , Ling Zhou

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

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 direct and indirect experimental proofs of a strong time invariance violation in optics are discussed. Time noninvariance for present day becomes the only real physical base for explanation the origin of the most phenomena in nonlinear…

General Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Vladimir A. Kuz'menko

We point out that time's arrow is naturally induced by quantum mechanical evolution, whenever the systems have a very large number ${\cal N}$ of non-degenerate states and a Hamiltonian bounded from below. When ${\cal N}$ is finite, the…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2024-07-03 Nemanja Kaloper

Deriving an arrow of time from time-reversal symmetric microscopic dynamics is a fundamental open problem in many areas of physics, ranging from cosmology, to particle physics, to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Here we focus on…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-01-31 Thomas Guff , Chintalpati Umashankar Shastry , Andrea Rocco

In this paper we lay out an argument that generically the psychological arrow of time should align with the thermodynamic arrow of time where that arrow is well-defined. This argument applies to any physical system that can act as a memory,…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2015-06-17 Leonard Mlodinow , Todd A. Brun

This study proposes a time-symmetric framework for quantum measurement that restores microscopic reversibility at the level of the dynamical description while remaining compatible with causality and thermodynamic consistency. Instead of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-12-01 Shin-ichi Inage

The mechanism by which thermodynamics sets the direction of time's arrow has long fascinated scientists. Here, we show that a machine learning algorithm can learn to discern the direction of time's arrow when provided with a system's…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2019-09-30 Alireza Seif , Mohammad Hafezi , Christopher Jarzynski

Conceptual problems regarding the arrow of time in classical physics, quantum physics, cosmology, and quantum gravity are discussed. Particular attention is paid to the dynamical role of the quantum indeterminism, and to various concepts of…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2012-07-30 H. D. Zeh