Related papers: Anthropic Selection for a Low-Entropy Past
Statistical mechanics relies on the complete though probabilistic description of a system in terms of all the microscopic variables. Its object is to derive therefrom static and dynamic properties involving some reduced set of variables.…
Entropy is a fundamental thermodynamic quantity indicative of the accessible degrees of freedom in a system. While it has been suggested that the entropy of a mesoscopic system can yield nontrivial information on emergence of exotic states,…
Based on Newton's laws reformulated in the Hamiltonian dynamics combined with statistical mechanics, we formulate a statistical mechanical theory supporting the hypothesis of a closed oscillating universe. We find that the behaviour of the…
The entropy produced when a quantum system is driven away from equilibrium can be decomposed in two parts, one related with populations and the other with quantum coherences. The latter is usually based on the so-called relative entropy of…
With a view to connecting random mutation on the molecular level to punctuated equilibrium behavior on the phenotype level, we propose a new model for biological evolution, which incorporates random mutation and natural selection. In this…
We employ the law of increasing entropy and the assumption about the decrease of the ground state energy to answer the question what are the reasons of the Big Bang and the origin of the Universe.
The usage of the anthropic principle in modern cosmology is reviewed. It is argued that its recent use to explain the observedvalues of cosmological parameters as most probable values for an ensemble of universes, is not justified. However,…
We consider the problem of diagnosis where a set of simple observations are used to infer a potentially complex hidden hypothesis. Finding the optimal subset of observations is intractable in general, thus we focus on the problem of active…
A classical particle system coupled with a thermostat driven by an external constant force reaches its steady state when the ensemble-averaged drift velocity does not vary with time. The statistical mechanics of such a system is derived…
We present a thermodynamic theory for a generic population of $M$ individuals distributed into $N$ groups (clusters). We construct the ensemble of all distributions with fixed $M$ and $N$, introduce a selection functional that embodies the…
Superstatistics describes nonequilibrium steady states as superpositions of canonical ensembles with a probability distribution of temperatures. Rather than assume a certain distribution of temperature, recently [J. Phys. A: Math. Theor.…
Herding is a deterministic algorithm used to generate data points that can be regarded as random samples satisfying input moment conditions. The algorithm is based on the complex behavior of a high-dimensional dynamical system and is…
Thermodynamic entropy, as defined by Clausius, characterizes macroscopic observations of a system based on phenomenological quantities such as temperature and heat. In contrast, information-theoretic entropy, introduced by Shannon, is a…
Organisms and algorithms learn probability distributions from previous observations, either over evolutionary time or on the fly. In the absence of regularities, estimating the underlying distribution from data would require observing each…
A possible mechanism of time is formulated by developing an idea of time replaced by quantum correlations, with the aid of modern quantum information theory. We invent a microscopic model, where correlations of a closed system are steadily…
Non-equilibrium states of a thermodynamic statistical system are investigated using the thermodynamic parameter of the system lifetime, first-passage time, the time before degeneration of the system under influence of fluctuations.…
We consider an isolated system in an arbitrary state and provide a general formulation using first principles for an additive and non-negative statistical quantity that is shown to reproduce the equilibrium thermodynamic entropy of the…
This is a completely rewritten version of the talk I gave at the Philosophy of Cosmology conference in Tenerife, September 2014, which incorporates elements of my IFT Madrid Anthropics Conference talk. The original was too technical. The…
We revisit textbook claims that entropy must increase and show that, under time-reversal invariant microscopic dynamics, no universal trajectory-wise or statistical assertion that the coarse-grained entropy $S(t)$ is non-decreasing can…
Within an inherently classical perspective, there is always an unavoidable energy cost associated with the information deletion and this common lore is at the heart of the Landauer's conjecture that does not impose, per se, any relevant…