Related papers: Thermodynamics without Time
Universality of classical thermodynamics rests on the central limit theorem, due to which, measurements of thermal fluctuations are unable to reveal detailed information regarding the microscopic structure of a macroscopic body. When small…
We show that, when we study the coexistence of general relativity with thermodynamics, some physical properties that are usually thought of as holographic and lying in the domain of quantum gravity can actually be accessed even at the…
A general quantum theory encompassing Mechanics, Thermodynamics and irreversible dynamics is presented in two parts. The first part is concerned exclusively with the description of the states of any individual physical system. It is based…
There are two strong clues about the quantum structure of spacetime and the gravitational dynamics, which are almost universally ignored in the conventional approaches to quantize gravity. The first clue is that null surfaces exhibit…
Classical thermodynamics is unrivalled in its range of applications and relevance to everyday life. It enables a description of complex systems, made up of microscopic particles, in terms of a small number of macroscopic quantities, such as…
Despite its enormous empirical success, the formalism of quantum theory still raises fundamental questions: why is nature described in terms of complex Hilbert spaces, and what modifications of it could we reasonably expect to find in some…
We investigate the thermodynamical properties of quantum fields in curved spacetime. Our approach is to consider quantum fields in curved spacetime as a quantum system undergoing an out-of-equilibrium transformation. The non-equilibrium…
Microscopic physical laws are time-symmetric, hence, a priori there exists no preferential temporal direction. However, the second law of thermodynamics allows one to associate the "forward" temporal direction to a positive variation of the…
In this paper, we study implications of the geometrical nature of space- time for some of the basic tenets of quantum mechanics. That is, we study two different implications of the principle of general covariance; first we quantize a…
From the Physics point of view, time is now best described through General Relativity, as part of space-time which is a dynamical object encoding gravity. Time possesses also some intrinsic irreversibility due to thermodynamics, quantum…
The emergence of irreversibility in physical processes, despite the fundamentally reversible nature of quantum mechanics, remains an open question in physics. This thesis explores the intricate relationship between quantum mechanics and…
Quantum gravity (or quantum spacetime) is to unify general relativity and quantum mechanics into a single theoretical framework and presented as the most important open puzzle in fundamental physics. The development of a microscopic theory…
Time directions are not invariant in conventional thermodynamics. We broadly follow ideas of Ludwig Boltzmann and investigate implications of postulating time-directional invariance in thermodynamics. In this investigation, we require that…
Because of the non-locality of quantum entanglement, realist approaches to completing quantum mechanics have implications for our conception of space. Quantum gravity also is expected to predict phenomena in which the locality of classical…
The theory of quantum thermodynamics investigates how the concepts of heat, work, and temperature can be carried over to the quantum realm, where fluctuations and randomness are fundamentally unavoidable. Of particular practical relevance…
It is a common view in philosophy of physics that thermodynamics is a non-fundamental theory. This is motivated in particular by the fact that thermodynamics is considered to be a paradigmatic example for a theory that can be reduced to…
The thermodynamics of quantum systems driven out of equilibrium has attracted increasing attention in last the decade, in connection with quantum information and statistical physics, and with a focus on non-classical signatures. While a…
Let us imagine that there is an overall quantum theory (not necessarily recognized yet) of matter and energy ({\it i.e.}, of elementary fermions and bosons) interacting with the physical spacetime (treated on a quantum level). Since states…
Observed physical phenomena can be described well by quantum mechanics or general relativity. People may try to find an unified fundamental theory which mainly aims to merge gravity with quantum theory. However, difficulty in merging those…
'Relativistic thermodynamics' should be understood not as a generalization of a non-relativistic theory but as an application of a general thermodynamic framework, neutral as to spacetime setting and allowing arbitrary conserved quantities,…