Related papers: A New Thermodynamics Featuring the Arrow in Time

Our observed Universe has a very strong arrow of time rooted in its low entropy starting point. This low entropy start can be related to various "tuning puzzles" about the early state of the Universe. Here we explore the relationship…

We study a quantum theory with complex time parameter and non-Hermitian Hamiltonian structure. In this theory, the real part of the complex time is equal to `usual' physical time, whereas the imaginary one is proportional to inverse…

Although most fundamental laws are invariant under time reversal, experience exhibits the presence of irreversible phenomena -- the arrows of time. Their origin lies in cosmology, and I argue that only quantum cosmology can provide the…

Living systems are fundamentally irreversible, breaking detailed balance and establishing an arrow of time. But how does the evident arrow of time for a whole system arise from the interactions among its multiple elements? We show that the…

Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modelling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motion and on the strength of the…

Irreversibility is one of the most intriguing concepts in physics. While microscopic physical laws are perfectly reversible, macroscopic average behavior has a preferred direction of time. According to the second law of thermodynamics, this…

Microphysical laws are time reversible, but macrophysics, chemistry and biology are not. This chapter explores how this asymmetry (a classic example of a broken symmetry) arises due to the cosmological context, where a non-local Direction…

Usually, it is supposed that irreversibility of time appears only in macrophysics. Here, we attempt to introduce the microphysical arrow of time assuming that at a fundamental level nature could be non-associative. Obtaining numerical…

We investigate the laws of thermodynamics in an accelerating universe driven by dark energy with a time-dependent equation of state. In the case we consider that the physically relevant part of the Universe is that envelopped by the…

This note addresses the relevance of rare events in system dynamics, inspired by Jill North reflections on the origin of the arrow of time in thermodynamics. After identifying the existence of rare events, characterized by a Pareto…

The fundamental problem on which Ilya Prigogine and the Brussels-Austin Group have focused can be stated briefly as follows. Our observations indicate that there is an arrow of time in our experience of the world (e.g., decay of unstable…

Disorder has been long considered as a formidable foe of theoretical physicists in their attempts to understand system's behavior. Here, we review recently accumulated data and propose that from the point of view of calculating…

I argue that if a special science satisfies certain key assumptions that are familiar from physicalist accounts of the special sciences and from physics, then its causal regularities have an associated notion of entropy, and that this…

One of the basic assumptions underlying Bell's theorem is the causal arrow of time, having to do with temporal order rather than spatial separation. Nonetheless, the physical assumptions regarding causality are seldom studied in this…

The recent development of the theory of fluctuation relations has led to new insights into the ever-lasting question of how irreversible behavior emerges from time-reversal symmetric microscopic dynamics. We provide an introduction to…

This study proposes a time-symmetric framework for quantum measurement that restores microscopic reversibility at the level of the dynamical description while remaining compatible with causality and thermodynamic consistency. Instead of…

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…

Many macroscopic physical processes are known to occur in a time-directed way despite the apparent time-symmetry of the known fundamental laws. A popular explanation is to postulate an unimaginably atypical state for the early universe -- a…

In a recent preprint [arXiv:2601.14134v1], Rubin argues that the arrow of time originates from the monotonic growth of the volume of extra dimensions. While the identification of a geometric origin for time's arrow is compelling in the case…

This paper relates both to the metaphysics of probability and to the physics of time asymmetry. Using the formalism of decoherent histories, it investigates whether intuitions about intrinsic time directedness that are often associated with…