Related papers: Ideal clocks - a convenient fiction
In general relativity, the picture of spacetime assigns an ideal clock to each worldline. Being ideal, gravitational effects due to these clocks are ignored and the flow of time according to one clock is not affected by the presence of…
We investigate a model of a supposedly ideal clock based on the decay rate of a charged particle in circular motion in a constant magnetic field. We show that the time measured by an ideal clock depends on the acceleration. However, the…
The theory of relativity associates a proper time with each moving object via its world line. In quantum theory however, such well-defined trajectories are forbidden. After introducing a general characterisation of quantum clocks, we…
We show that the space-time uncertainty relation for the quantum clock can be derived from the maximum force principle.
Ordinary quantum mechanics is formulated on the basis of the existence of an ideal classical clock external to the system under study. This is clearly an idealization. As emphasized originally by Salecker and Wigner and more recently by…
A clock is, from an information-theoretic perspective, a system that emits information about time. One may therefore ask whether the theory of information imposes any constraints on the maximum precision of clocks. Here we show a…
In the framework of any quantum theory in the Schroedinger picture a general operator time concept is given. For this purpose certain systems are emphasized as ideal quantum clocks. Their definition follows heuristically from a common…
Proper time, ideal clocks, and boosts are well understood classically, but subtleties arise in quantum physics. We show that quantum clocks set in motion via momentum boosts do not witness classical time dilation. However, using velocity…
A way to encode acceleration directly into fields has recently being proposed, thus establishing a new kind of fields, the accelerated fields. The definition of accelerated fields points to the quantization of space and time, analogously to…
We critically discuss the measure of very short time intervals. By means of a Gedankenexperiment, we describe an ideal clock based on the occurrence of completely random events. Many previous thought experiments have suggested fundamental…
Real clocks are not perfect. This must have an effect in our predictions for the behaviour of a quantum system, an effect for which we present a unified description encompassing several previous proposals. We study the relevance of clock…
Continuous clocks, i.e. the clocks that measure time in a continuous manner, are regarded as an essential component of sensing technology. Precision and recurrence time are two basic features of continuous clocks. In this paper, in the…
A formalism for quantizing time reparametrization invariant dynamics is considered and applied to systems which contain an `almost ideal clock.' Previously, this formalism was successfully applied to the Bianchi models and, while it…
Time plays a fundamental role in our ability to make sense of the physical laws in the world around us. The nature of time has puzzled people -- from the ancient Greeks to the present day -- resulting in a long running debate between…
We perform a protocol for multipartite quantum clock synchronization under the influence of Unruh thermal noise. The clocks consisting of Unruh-DeWitt detectors when one of detectors accelerated is obtained. To estimate the time difference…
Two particularly simple ideal clocks exhibiting intrinsic circular motion with the speed of light and opposite spin alignment are described. The clocks are singled out by singularities of an inverse Legendre transformation for relativistic…
A quantum clock must satisfy two basic constraints. The first is a bound on the time resolution of the clock given by the difference between its maximum and minimum energy eigenvalues. The second follows from Holevo's bound on how much…
Time plays a crucial role in the intuitive understanding of the world around us. Within quantum mechanics, however, time is not usually treated as an observable quantity; it enters merely as a parameter in the laws of motion of physical…
We critically discuss the measure of very short time intervals. By means of a "gedankenexperiment", we describe an ideal clock based on the occurrence of completely random events. We show that the minimum time interval Delta t that this…
A proper time observable for a quantum clock is introduced and it is found that the proper time read by one clock conditioned on another clock reading a different proper time obeys classical time dilation in accordance with special…