Related papers: Origin of time and probability in quantum cosmolog…
What is the physical origin of the arrow of time? It is a commonly held belief in the physics community that it relates to the increase of entropy as it appears in the statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. At the…
We describe a link between the cosmological constant problem and the problem of time in quantum gravity. This arises by examining the relationship between the cosmological constant and vacuum energy in light of non-perturbative formulations…
Theories of quantum gravity generically presuppose or predict that the reality underlying relativistic spacetimes they are describing is significantly non-spatiotemporal. On pain of empirical incoherence, approaches to quantum gravity must…
Familiar formulations of classical and quantum mechanics are shown to follow from a general theory of mechanics based on pure states with an intrinsic probability structure. This theory is developed to the stage where theorems from quantum…
A pedagogical introduction is given to the quantum mechanics of closed systems, most generally the universe as a whole. Quantum mechanics aims at predicting the probabilities of alternative coarse-grained time histories of a closed system.…
Independent studies by different authors have proposed that classicality may be induced in quantum objects by cosmological constraints presented by an expanding universe of finite extent in space-time. Cosmological effects on a quantum…
We argue that space and space-time emerge as a consequence of dynamical collapse of the wave function of macroscopic objects. Locality and separability are properties of our approximate, emergent universe. At the fundamental level,…
In previous works, we showed that both time and space can emerge from entanglement within a globally constrained quantum Universe, with no background coordinates. By extending the Page and Wootters quantum time formalism to include both…
The standard formulation of quantum theory assumes a predefined notion of time. This is a major obstacle in the search for a quantum theory of gravity, where the causal structure of space-time is expected to be dynamical and fundamentally…
Emergence of the classical world from the quantum substrate of our Universe is a long-standing conundrum. I describe three insights into the transition from quantum to classical that are based on the recognition of the role of the…
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…
We show how to formulate physical theory taking as a starting point the set of states (geometric approach). We discuss the relation of this formulation to the conventional approach to classical and quantum mechanics and the theory of…
Uncovering the origin of the arrow of time remains a fundamental scientific challenge. Within the framework of statistical physics, this problem was inextricably associated with the second law of thermodynamics, which declares that entropy…
We consider a simple cosmological model consisting of an empty Bianchi I Universe, whose Hamiltonian we deparametrise to provide a natural clock variable. The model thus effectively describes an isotropic universe with an induced clock…
It is widely hoped that quantum gravity will shed light on the question of the origin of time in physics. The currently dominant approaches to a candidate quantum theory of gravity have naturally evolved from general relativity, on the one…
This paper is a continuation of the paper [V.S.Mashkevich, gr-qc/9409010]. Indeterministic quantum gravity is a theory that unifies general relativity and quantum theory involving indeterministic conception, i.e., quantum jumps. By the same…
We show that the local and deterministic mode of description is not only in conflict with the quantum theory, but also with relativity. We argue that elementary relativistic properties of spacetime lead to the emergence of a…
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…
We summarize the arguments that space and time are likely to be emergent notions; i.e. they are not present in the fundamental formulation of the theory, but appear as approximate macroscopic concepts. Along the way we briefly review…
We consider a number of aspects of the problem of defining time observables in quantum theory. Time observables are interesting quantities in quantum theory because they often cannot be associated with self-adjoint operators. Their…