Related papers: Reversing the Arrow of Time
Symmetry is fundamental to understanding our physical world. An antisymmetry operation switches between two different states of a trait, such as two time-states, position-states, charge-states, spin-states, chemical-species etc. This review…
Driven by the term "the arrow of time" as a general topic, the article develops a musical discussion by referring to the etymological origin of the term: philosophy (epistemology) and physics (thermodynamics). In particular, the article…
The direct and indirect experimental proofs of a strong time invariance violation in optics are discussed. Time noninvariance for present day becomes the only real physical base for explanation the origin of the most phenomena in nonlinear…
The utilization of time reversal symmetry in designing and implementing (quantum) optical experiments has become more and more frequent over the past years. We review the basic idea underlying time reversal methods, illustrate it with…
For more than a century, physics has known of a puzzling conflict between the T-asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomena and the T-symmetry of the underlying microphysics on which these phenomena depend. This paper provides a guide to the…
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.…
I'll begin with some well-deserved acknowledgements: I am grateful to Daniel Harlow for discussions of time-reversal holonomies. I have also benefited from a long ongoing correspondence with Edward Witten, but frankly in both cases I can't…
Time reversal symmetry is studied in a space with noncommutativity of coordinates and noncommutativity of momenta of canonical type. The circular motion is examined as an apparent example of time reversal symmetry breaking in the space. On…
A broken time-reversal symmetry, i.e. broken detailed balance, is central to non-equilibrium physics and is a prerequisite for life. However, it turns out to be quite challenging to unambiguously define and quantify time-reversal symmetry…
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…
The fundamental time-reversal invariance of dynamical systems can be broken in various ways. One way is based on the presence of resonances and their interactions giving rise to unstable dynamical systems, leading to well-defined time…
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…
Recent advances in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics shed new light on the ratchet effect. The ratchet motion can thus be understood in terms of symmetry (breaking) considerations. We introduce an additional symmetry operation besides…
It has often been suggested that retrocausality offers a solution to some of the puzzles of quantum mechanics: e.g., that it allows a Lorentz-invariant explanation of Bell correlations, and other manifestations of quantum nonlocality,…
In an apparently unexplored region of relativistic spacetime, a simple thought experiment demonstrates that conjoined Lorentz transformations predict a proper clock at rest will run backwards and that prediction violates the logical…
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…
Any theory that states that the basic laws of physics are time-symmetric must be strictly deterministic. Only determinism enables time reversal of entropy increase. A contradiction therefore arises between two statements of Hawking. A…
We show that the arrow of time is intimately related to the geometry and topology of the whole universe, and is therefore best understood as a cosmological phenomenon.
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…
It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations in which the laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergency of irreversibility from the…