Related papers: Reversing the irreversible: from limit cycles to e…
Collapse models are modifications of quantum theory where the wave function is treated as physically real and the collapse of the wave function is a physical process. This appears to introduce a time reversal asymmetry into the dynamics of…
Active matter encompasses systems whose individual consituents dissipate energy to exert propelling forces on their environment. This rapidly developing field harbors a dynamical phenomenology with no counterpart in passive systems. The…
It is recalled that closed (isolated) systems are essentially reversible whilst open systems like the Earth, or living beings on it, are irreversible because they are not isolated. Earth and life irreversibility derives from the evolution…
Temporal irreversibility, often referred to as the arrow of time, is a fundamental concept in statistical mechanics. Markers of irreversibility also provide a powerful characterisation of information processing in biological systems.…
It is often claimed that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric and that therefore our experience of the passage of time is an illusion. This paper will critically discuss these claims and show that they are…
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…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
One of the important questions in statistical mechanics is how irreversibility (time's arrow) occurs when Newton equations of motion are time reversal invariant. One objection to irreversibility is based on Poincar\'e's recursion theorem: a…
The concept of time series irreversibility -- the degree by which the statistics of signals are not invariant under time reversal -- naturally appears in non-equilibrium physics in stationary systems which operate away from equilibrium and…
Why does time appear to pass irreversibly? To investigate, we introduce a class of partitioned cellular automata (PCAs) whose cellwise evolution is based on the chaotic baker's map. After imposing a suitable initial condition and…
Many empirical time series are genuinely symbolic: examples range from link activation patterns in network science, DNA coding or firing patterns in neuroscience to cryptography or combinatorics on words. In some other contexts, the…
It is one of the most important and long-standing issues of physics to derive the irreversibility out of a time-reversal symmetric equation of motion. The present paper considers the breaking of the time-reversal symmetry in open quantum…
There is a relation between the irreversibility of thermodynamic processes as expressed by the breaking of time-reversal symmetry, and the entropy production in such processes. We explain on an elementary mathematical level the relations…
Time-reversal had always been assumed to be a symmetry of physics at the fundamental level. In this paper we will explore the violations of time-reversal symmetry at the fundamental level and the consequences on thermodynamic systems.…
Despite the fact that the fundamental physical laws are symmetric in time, most observed processes do not show this symmetry. Especially the phenomenon of decay seems to involve a kind of irreversibility that makes the definition of a…
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…
Fundamental laws of physics are symmetric under time reversal ($T$) symmetry, but the $T$ symmetry is strongly broken in the macroscopic world. In this Perspective, I review $T$ symmetry breaking frameworks: \textit{second law of…
Living systems are fundamentally irreversible, breaking detailed balance and establishing an arrow of time. But how does the evident arrow of time for a whole system arise from the interactions among its multiple elements? We show that the…
Irreversibility and acausality of a sub-system are established in exactly soluble harmonic models with reversible and causal dynamics. It is shown that initial conditions, imposed on some dynamical degrees of freedom may break time reversal…
Time's apparent passage has long been debated by philosophers, with no decisive argument for or against its objective existence. In this paper we show that introducing the issue of determinism gives the debate a new, empirical twist. We…