Related papers: On the Relation between the Psychological and Ther…
In [Sch05a], it is argued that Boltzmann's intuition, that the psychological arrow of time is necessarily aligned with the thermodynamic arrow, is correct. Schulman gives an explicit physical mechanism for this connection, based on the…
The epistemic arrow of time is the fact that our knowledge of the past seems to be both of a different kind and more detailed than our knowledge of the future. Just like with the other arrows of time, it has often been speculated that the…
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…
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…
A clear explanation is given on how the causal, psychological, and electrodynamic time arrows emerge from the thermodynamic time arrow.
The thermodynamic arrow-of-time problem is thought to be resolved by the observation that our universe initially was---and still is---far from equilibrium. The psychological arrow-of-time problem is often attributed the same resolution, but…
The familiar textbook quantum mechanics of laboratory measurements incorporates a quantum mechanical arrow of time --- the direction in time in which state vector reduction operates. This arrow is usually assumed to coincide with the…
Statistical physics cannot explain why a thermodynamic arrow of time exists, unless one postulates very special and unnatural initial conditions. Yet, we argue that statistical physics can explain why the thermodynamic arrow of time is…
Arrows of time - thermodynamical, cosmological, electromagnetic, quantum mechanical, psychological - are basic properties of Nature. For a quantum system-bath closed system the de-correlated initial conditions and no-memory (Markovian)…
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…
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…
In this work we analyse the structure of the thermodynamic arrow of time, defined by transformations that leave the thermal equilibrium state unchanged, in classical (incoherent) and quantum (coherent) regimes. We note that in the…
In both thermodynamics and quantum mechanics the arrow of time is characterized by the statistical likelihood of physical processes. We characterize this arrow of time for the continuous quantum measurement dynamics of a superconducting…
A model in which two weakly coupled systems maintain opposite running thermodynamic arrows of time is exhibited. Each experiences its own retarded electromagnetic interaction and can be seen by the other. The possibility of opposite-arrow…
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…
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…
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…
Microscopic physical laws are time-symmetric, hence, a priori there exists no preferential temporal direction. However, the second law of thermodynamics allows one to associate the "forward" temporal direction to a positive variation of the…
Consider a Hamiltonian system that consists of a slow subsystem S and a fast subsystem F. The autonomous dynamics of S is driven by an effective Hamiltonian, but its thermodynamics is unexpected. We show that a well-defined thermodynamic…
It is a truth universally acknowledged that all isolated macroscopic systems must be in want of ever greater disorder, with due apologies to Jane Austen for plagiarizing the opening line in her novel {\it Pride and Prejudice}. This common,…