Related papers: Einselection, Equilibrium and Cosmology
Most attempts to argue for the second law of thermodynamics fail because (1) they use the unviable frequency theory of probability and (2) they do not explain why the arrow of time seen in experiments is aligned with the thermodynamic arrow…
We introduce a framework to study the emergence of time and causal structure in quantum many-body systems. In doing so, we consider quantum states which encode spacetime dynamics, and develop information theoretic tools to extract the…
We analyze the origin of the quasiclassical realm from the no-boundary proposal for the universe's quantum state in a class of minisuperspace models. The models assume homogeneous, isotropic, closed spacetime geometries, a single scalar…
Despite the importance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is not absolute. Statistical mechanics implies that, given sufficient time, systems near equilibrium will spontaneously fluctuate into lower-entropy states, locally reversing…
The spread of the time arrows from the environment to an observed subsystem is followed within a harmonic model. A similarity is pointed out between irreversibility and a phase with spontaneously broken symmetry. The causal structure of…
Different approaches to quantum gravity, such as loop quantum cosmology and group field theory, predict the resolution of the initial cosmological singularity via a bounce: a regular spacetime region that connects the expanding branch of…
The familiar textbook quantum mechanics of laboratory measurements incorporates a quantum mechanical arrow of time --- the direction in time in which state vector reduction operates. This arrow is usually assumed to coincide with the…
Quantum cosmology offers a unique stage to address questions of time related to its underlying (and perhaps truly quantum dynamical) meaning as well as its origin. Some of these issues can be analyzed with a general scheme of quantum…
Two of the most difficult problems in the foundations of physics are (1) what gives rise to the arrow of time and (2) what the ontology of quantum mechanics is. They are difficult because the fundamental dynamical laws of physics do not…
Universe structure emerges in the unreduced, complex-dynamical interaction process with the simplest initial configuration (two attracting homogeneous fields). The unreduced interaction analysis avoiding any perturbative model gives…
Universe structure emerges in the unreduced, complex-dynamic interaction process with the simplest initial configuration (two attracting homogeneous fields, quant-ph/9902015). The unreduced interaction analysis gives intrinsically creative…
Two of the most difficult problems in the foundations of physics are (1) what gives rise to the arrow of time and (2) what the ontology of quantum mechanics is. I propose a unified 'Humean' solution to the two problems. Humeanism allows us…
Selection of the preferred classical set of states in the process of decoherence -- so important for cosmological considerations -- is discussed with an emphasis on the role of information loss and entropy. {\it Persistence of correlations}…
I explain in what sense the structure of space and time is probably vague or indefinite, a notion I define. This leads to the mathematical representation of location in space and time by a vague interval. From this, a principle of…
Cosmological boundary conditions for particles and fields are often discussed as a Cauchy problem, in which configurations and conjugate momenta are specified on an "initial" time slice. But this is not the only way to specify boundary…
In this paper it is presented the model of a multiverse made up of entangled pairs of universes. The arrow of time obtained from the principles of thermodynamics and the arrow of time given by the thermodynamics of entanglement for single…
Certain intriguing consequences of the discreteness of time on the time evolution of dynamical systems are discussed. In the discrete-time classical mechanics proposed here, there is an {\it arrow of time} that follows from the fact that…
This paper is a continuation of the paper gr-qc/0203045 and is devoted to the problem of the arrow of time. A deterministic past-directed dynamics is constructed, which results in the retrodictive universe. A future-directed dynamics of the…
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…
Two major apparently unrelated problems, that of the origin of time in the universe associated with quantum gravity and to the entropy in de Sitter cosmological models, are found to have their origin in a single physical phenomenon: the…