Related papers: Time from quantum state complexity and the pace of…

The second law of thermodynamics is asymmetric with respect to time as it says that the entropy of the universe must have been lower in the past and will be higher in the future. How this time-asymmetric law arises from the time-symmetric…

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…

The well-known formal analogy between time and absolute temperature, existing on the quantum level, is considered as a profound duality relationship requiring some modifications in the conventional quantum dynamics. They consist of tiny…

We investigate the thermodynamic arrow of time in a time-symmetrically recollapsing universe by calculating quantum mechanically the entropy production of a massive scalar field. It is found that even though the Hamiltonian has a…

We propose to use the effect of measurements instead of their number to study the time evolution of quantum systems under monitoring. This time redefinition acts like a microscope which blows up the inner details of seemingly instantaneous…

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 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…

The problem of time is a deep paradox in our physical description of the world. According to Aristotle's relational theory, time is a measure of change and does not exist on its own. In contrast, quantum mechanics, just like Newtonian…

Why do quantum evolutions occur and why do they stop at certain points? In classical thermodynamics affinity was introduced to predict in which direction an irreversible process proceeds. In this paper the quantum mechanical counterpart of…

In this paper we discuss the traditional approaches to the problem of the arrow of time. On the basis of this discussion we adopt a global and non-entropic approach, according to which the arrow of time has a global origin and is an…

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…

The existence of a thermodynamic arrow of time in the present universe implies that the initial state of the observable portion of our universe at (or near) the ``big bang'' must have been very ``special''. We argue that it is not plausible…

I address the question whether the origin of the observed arrow of time can be derived from quantum cosmology. After a general discussion of entropy in cosmology and some numerical estimates, I give a brief introduction into quantum…

A novel quantum time dilation effect is shown to arise when a clock moves in a quantum superposition of two relativistic velocities. This effect is argued to be measurable using existing atomic interferometry techniques, potentially…

We discuss the arrow of time in terms of the increase of correlations between the system and its environment. Here we show that the existence of the arrow of time, based on deleting correlations, requires a strict absence of initial…

Here we investigate the impact of temporal entanglement on a system's ability to perform thermodynamical work. We show that while the quantum version of the Jarzynski equality remains satisfied even in the presence of temporal entanglement,…

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…

The aim of this article is to analyze the relation between the second law of thermodynamics and the so-called arrow of time. For this purpose, a number of different aspects in this arrow of time are distinguished, in particular those of…

We investigate three aspects of the supposed problem of time: The disagreement between the treatments of time in general relativity and quantum theory, the problem of recovering time from within an isolated Universe and the prevalence of a…

Physical laws for elementary particles can be described by the quantum dynamics equation given a Hamiltonian. The solution are probability amplitudes in Hilbert space that evolve over time. A probability density function over position and…