Related papers: Clocking in the face of unpredictability beyond qu…

Atomic clocks are at the leading edge of accuracy and precision and are essential for synchronization of distributed critical infrastructure, position, navigation and timing, and scientific applications. There has been a breakthrough in the…

Time plays a crucial role in the performance of computing systems. The accurate modelling of logical devices, and of their physical implementations, requires an appropriate representation of time and of all properties that depend on this…

Synchronization is of central importance in power distribution, telecommunication, neuronal, and biological networks. Many networks are observed to produce patterns of synchronized clusters, but it has been difficult to predict these…

A quantum clock working as a control device is examined. The quality of the control process is characterized by the magnitude of deviation of perturbed state from unperturbed state of the controlled system. Uncertainty relations that relate…

All clocks, in some form or another, use the evolution of nature towards higher entropy states to quantify the passage of time. Due to the statistical nature of the second law and corresponding entropy flows, fluctuations fundamentally…

Algorithms for the synchronisation of clocks across networks are both common and important within distributed systems. We here address not only the formal modelling of these algorithms, but also the formal verification of their behaviour.…

In standard quantum theory, time is not an observable. It enters as a parameter in the Schr\"odinger equation, but there is no measurement operator associated to it. Nevertheless, one may take an operational viewpoint and regard time as the…

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…

Technologies for manipulating single atoms have advanced drastically in the past decades. Due to their excellent controllability of internal states, atoms serve as one of the ideal platforms as quantum systems. One major research direction…

The world runs on communicated sequences of symbols, e.g. numerals. Examining both engineered and natural communications networks reveals an unsuspected order that depends on contact with an unpredictable entity. This order has three roots.…

In thermodynamics, quantum coherences - superpositions between energy eigenstates - behave in distinctly nonclassical ways. Recently mathematical frameworks have emerged to account for these features and have provided a range of novel…

Recent developments in frequency metrology and optical clocks have been based on electronic transitions in atoms and singly charged ions as references. These systems have enabled relative frequency uncertainties at a level of a few parts in…

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…

We consider the ambiguity associated with the choice of clock in time reparameterization invariant theories. This arbitrariness undermines the goal of prescribing a fixed set of physical laws, since a change of time variable can completely…

Circadian clocks are the central timekeepers of life, allowing cells to anticipate changes between day and night. Experiments in recent years have revealed that circadian clocks can be highly stable, raising the question how reliably they…

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.…

Sensor networks potentially feature large numbers of nodes that can sense their environment over time, communicate with each other over a wireless network, and process information. They differ from data networks in that the network as a…

Optical atomic clocks are our most precise tools to measure time and frequency. They enable precision frequency comparisons between atoms in separate locations to probe the space-time variation of fundamental constants, the properties of…

Quantum technologies present new opportunities for fundamental tests of nature. One potential application is to probe the interplay between quantum physics and general relativity - a field of physics with no empirical evidence yet. Here we…

Besides the purely digital or analog interpretation of reality there is a third possibility which incorporates important aspects of both. This is the cyclic formulation of elementary systems, in which elementary particles are represented as…