Related papers: The Quantum Mechanical Arrows of Time
The origin and nature of time in complex systems is explored using quantum (or 'Feynman') clocks and the signals produced by them. Networks of these clocks provide the basis for the evolution of complex systems. The general concept of…
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…
In a quantum universe with a strong arrow of time, it is standard to postulate that the initial wave function started in a particular macrostate--the special low-entropy macrostate selected by the Past Hypothesis. Moreover, there is an…
Understanding the emergence of the thermodynamic arrow of time in microscopic systems is of fundamental importance, particularly given that unitary evolution preserves time-reversal symmetry. While projective measurements introduce temporal…
We formulate quantum mechanics in spacetimes with real-order fractional geometry and more general factorizable measures. In spacetimes where coordinates and momenta span the whole real line, Heisenberg's principle is proven and the…
For decades, researchers have sought to understand how the irreversibility of the surrounding world emerges from the seemingly time symmetric, fundamental laws of physics. Quantum mechanics conjectured a clue that final irreversibility is…
The perspective is advanced that the time parameter in quantum mechanics corresponds to the time coordinate in a Minkowski flat spacetime local approximation to the actual dynamical curved spacetime of General Relativity, rather than to an…
A clear explanation is given on how the causal, psychological, and electrodynamic time arrows emerge from the thermodynamic time arrow.
We discuss quantum entanglement in the context of the thermodynamic arrow of time. We review the role of correlations in entropy-decreasing events and prove that the occurrence of a transformation between two thermodynamic states…
Most attempts to argue for the second law of thermodynamics fail because (1) they use the unviable frequency theory of probability and (2) they do not explain why the arrow of time seen in experiments is aligned with the thermodynamic arrow…
It is shown that position-momentum correlation is never decreasing and therefore it is a good candidate as a quantum arrow of time devoid of shortcomings of other proposals.
What is the physical origin of the arrow of time? It is a commonly held belief in the physics community that it relates to the increase of entropy as it appears in the statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. At the…
We introduce a framework to study the emergence of time and causal structure in quantum many-body systems. In doing so, we consider quantum states which encode spacetime dynamics, and develop information theoretic tools to extract the…
This paper presents a unified formulation of the origin of the arrow of time in classical and quantum mechanics. We begin with a mechanical analysis of a one-dimensional three-particle system, which provides a concrete example in which…
We sketch a quantum mechanical framework for the universe as a whole. Within that framework we propose a program for describing the ultimate origin in quantum cosmology of the quasiclassical domain of familiar experience and for…
Microphysical laws are time reversible, but macrophysics, chemistry and biology are not. This chapter explores how this asymmetry (a classic example of a broken symmetry) arises due to the cosmological context, where a non-local Direction…
A pedagogical introduction is given to the quantum mechanics of closed systems, most generally the universe as a whole. Quantum mechanics aims at predicting the probabilities of alternative coarse-grained time histories of a closed system.…
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…
The canonical answer to the question posed is "Yes." -- tacitly assuming that quantum theory and the concept of spacetime are to be unified by `quantizing' a theory of gravitation. Yet, instead, one may ponder: Could quantum mechanics arise…