Related papers: The pollen and the electron: a study in randomness
The Karolyhazy uncertainty relation is the statement that if a device is used to measure a length $l$, there will be a minimum uncertainty $\delta l$ in the measurement, given by $(\delta l)^3 \sim L_P^2\; l$. This is a consequence of…
We start from classical general relativity coupled to matter fields. Each configuration variable and its conjugate momentum, as also space-time points, are raised to the status of matrices [equivalently operators]. These matrices obey a…
One of the central challenges in kinetic theory is the derivation of macroscopic evolution equations--describing, for example, the dynamics of an electron gas--from the underlying fundamental microscopic laws of classical or quantum…
The origin of classical predictability is investigated for the one dimensional harmonic chain considered as a closed quantum mechanical system. By comparing the properties of a family of coarse-grained descriptions of the chain, we conclude…
The common perception is that strong coupling to the environment will always render the evolution of the system density matrix quasi-classical (in fact, diffusive) in the long time limit. We present here a counter-example, in which a…
Nonequilibrium thermodynamics formalism is proposed to derive the flux of grainy (bubbles-containing) matter, emerging in a nucleation growth process. Some power and non-power limits, due to the applied potential as well as owing to basic…
The butterfly effect is today commonly identified with the sensitive dependence of deterministic chaotic systems upon initial conditions. However, this is only one facet of the notion of unpredictability pioneered by Lorenz, who actually…
Determinism is established in quantum mechanics by tracing the probabilities in the Born rules back to the absolute (overall) phase constants of the wave functions and recognizing these phase constants as pseudorandom numbers. The reduction…
It is shown that the grain mass fluctuation, which is due to the grain sputtering by the attracted ions, may be at the root of a new instability in infinite, unmagnetized and homogeneous dusty plasmas. The growth rate is determined in the…
A fundamental question in nonequilibrium statistical physics is whether effective equilibrium behavior can emerge at coarse-grained scales in strongly driven systems. Here, we investigate this question in the context of human mobility by…
The plastic flow of a polycrystal is analyzed assuming grains as fine that the rate limiting process is grain boundary sliding, and grains readily accommodate their shapes by slip to preserve spatial continuity. It is shown that thinking of…
The classical model for the genealogies of a neutrally evolving population in a fixed environment is due to Kingman. Kingman's coalescent process, which produces a binary tree, universally emerges from many microscopic models in which the…
A single mechanism, endemic to the standard model of physics, is proposed to explain wavefunction collapse, classical motion, dissipation, equilibration, and the transition from pure quantum mechanics through open system decoherence to the…
We use confocal microscopy and time-resolved light scattering to investigate plasticity in a col- loidal polycrystal, following the evolution of the network of grain boundaries as the sample is submitted to thousands of shear deformation…
The effect of decoherence, induced by spontaneous emission, on the dynamics of cold atoms periodically kicked by an optical lattice is experimentally and theoretically studied. Ideally, the mean energy growth is essentially unaffected by…
We investigate how classical predictability of the coarse-grained evolution of the quantum baker's map depends on the character of the coarse-graining. Our analysis extends earlier work by Brun and Hartle [Phys. Rev. D 60, 123503 (1999)] to…
Our everyday descriptions of the universe are highly coarse-grained, following only a tiny fraction of the variables necessary for a perfectly fine-grained description. Coarse graining in classical physics is made natural by our limited…
Darwinism conceives evolution as a consequence of random variation and natural selection, hence it is based on a materialistic, i.e. matter-based, view of science inspired by classical physics. But matter in itself is considered a very…
A particle subject to successive, random displacements is said to execute a random walk (in position or some other coordinate). The mathematical properties of random walks have been very thoroughly investigated, and the model is used in…
Emergence is a concept that is easy to exhibit, but very hard to formally handle. This paper is about cubic sand grains moving around on nicely packed columns in one dimension (the physical sandpile is two dimensional, but the support of…