Related papers: Anthropic Selection for a Low-Entropy Past
We address how to construct an infinitely cyclic universe model. A major consideration is to make the entropy cyclic which requires the entropy to be reset to zero in each cycle expansion to turnaround, to contraction, to bounce, etc. Here…
In this paper we review various information-theoretic characterizations of the approach to equilibrium in biological systems. The replicator equation, evolutionary game theory, Markov processes and chemical reaction networks all describe…
New exact results about the nonequilibrium thermodynamics of open quantum systems at arbitrary timescales are obtained by considering all possible variations of initial conditions of a system, its environment, and correlations between them.…
The concept of entropy in statistical physics is related to the existence of irreversible macroscopic processes. In this work, we explore a recently introduced entropy formula for a class of stochastic processes with more than one absorbing…
We numerically determine the entropy for heat-conducting states, which is connected to the so-called excess heat considered as a basic quantity for steady-state thermodynamics in nonequilibrium. We adopt an efficient method to estimate the…
According to thermodynamics, the inevitable increase of entropy allows the past to be distinguished from the future. From this perspective, any clock must incorporate an irreversible process that allows this flow of entropy to be tracked.…
Probably not, because there are lots of manifestly unanthropic ways of producing entropy. We demonstrate that the Causal Entropic Principle (CEP), as a replacement for the anthropic principle to explain the properties of the observed…
The original formulation of the (weak) anthropic principle was prompted by a question about objective time at a macroscopic level, namely the age of the universe when ``anthropic'' observers such as ourselves would be most likely to emerge.…
A microscopic understanding of the thermodynamic entropy in quantum systems has been a mystery ever since the invention of quantum mechanics. In classical physics, this entropy is believed to be the logarithm of the volume of phase space…
We show here how to use pieces of thermodynamics' first law to generate probability distributions for generalized ensembles when only level-population changes are involved. Such microstate occupation modifications, if properly constrained…
The problem of making predictions from theories that have landscapes of possible low energy parameters is reviewed. Conditions for such a theory to yield falsifiable predictions for doable experiments are given. It is shown that the…
From thermodynamic origins, the concept of entropy has expanded to a range of statistical measures of uncertainty, which may still be thermodynamically significant. However, laboratory measurements of entropy continue to rely on direct…
Weinberg et al. calculated the anthropic likelihood of the cosmological constant using a model assuming that the number of observers is proportional to the total mass of gravitationally collapsed objects, with mass greater than a certain…
The division by N! in the expression of statistical entropy is usually justified to students by the statement that classical particles should be counted as indistinguishable. Sometimes, quantum indistinguishability is invoked to explain it.…
Entropy might be a not well defined concept if the system can undergo transformations involving stationary nonequilibria. It might be analogous to the heat content (once called ``caloric'') in transformations that are not isochoric (i.e.…
The science of thermodynamics was put together in the Nineteenth Century to describe large systems in equilibrium. One part of thermodynamics defines entropy for equilibrium systems and demands an ever-increasing entropy for non-equilibrium…
As observers of the universe we are physical systems within it. If the universe is very large in space and/or time, the probability becomes significant that the data on which we base predictions is replicated at other locations in…
We give a simple proof of the uncertainty principle with quantum side information, as in [Berta et al. Nature Physics 6, 659 (2010)], invoking the monotonicity of the relative entropy. Our proof shows that the entropic uncertainty principle…
The laws of Physics are time-reversible, making no qualitative distinction between the past and the future -- yet we can only go towards the future. This apparent contradiction is known as the "arrow of time problem". Its current resolution…
Stochastic thermodynamics provides the framework to analyze thermodynamic laws and quantities along individual trajectories of small but fully observable systems. If the observable level fails to capture all relevant degrees of freedom,…