Related papers: Causality in Physics: From Galileo to Einstein, an…
It has been a long time issue in statistical physics how to combine reversible microscopic equations with irreversible macroscopic behavior. Recently, Evans and Searles have suggested causality as the key concept for a solution to the…
General Relativity resembles a very elegant crystal glass: If we touch its principles, that is, its Lagrangian, there is a risk of breaking everything. Or, if we will, it is like a short blanket: Curing some problems creates new problems.…
Quantum mechanics has maintained over the years the reputation of being "the most obscure theory." It works perfectly well, but nobody seems to know why. It has been argued that the difficulty in understanding quantum theory is our failed…
Information is everywhere in nature which is very uncertain and unpredictable. But information, in itself, is a very ambiguous term. In this cursory write-up, we attempt to understand the formal meaning of information by quantifying…
Causality has the potential to truly transform the way we solve a large number of real-world problems. Yet, so far, its potential largely remains to be unlocked as causality often requires crucial assumptions which cannot be tested in…
This paper provides a thorough introduction to the causal set hypothesis aimed at students, and other interested persons, with some knowledge of general relativity and nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. I elucidate the arguments for why the…
Without a doubt many problems in physics arise as a consequence of our philosophical conception of the world. In this contribution however we endeavor to alleviate this scenario by putting forward a philosophical approach under which some…
Understanding the causal influences that hold among parts of a system is critical both to explaining that system's natural behaviour and to controlling it through targeted interventions. In a quantum world, understanding causal relations is…
While speed is an ubiquitous concept in physics, its inverse - known as slowness - sometimes proves more relevant. We discuss some case studies within classical physics where such a notion is fruitful, before exploring how it can be…
The causal set approach to quantum gravity is based on the hypothesis that the underlying structure of spacetime is that of a random partial order. We survey some of the interesting mathematics that has arisen in connection with the causal…
The concept of causality has a controversial history. The question of whether it is possible to represent and address causal problems with probability theory, or if fundamentally new mathematics such as the do-calculus is required has been…
Although general relativity is a predictively successful theory, it treats matter as classical rather than as quantum. For this reason, it will have to be replaced by a more fundamental quantum theory of gravity. Attempts to formulate a…
We start from the well-known form of the interval of the special relativity, stare it, and build up an attempt to implement the causality from it. Some features appear to be new, they involve the mass of the particle and the structure of…
Causality has been the issue of philosophic debate since Hippocrates. It is used in formal verification and testing, e.g., to explain counterexamples or construct fault trees. Recent work defines actual causation in terms of Pearl's…
Einstein's general theory of relativity is the standard theory of gravity, especially where the needs of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and fundamental physics are concerned. As such, this theory is used for many practical purposes…
Classical physics has enabled the acquisition of significant knowledge of the physical properties of nature on a standard macroscopic scale. These achievements were driven by use of the causal ontological approach (proposed originally by…
Causality in quantum field theory is defined by the vanishing of field commutators for space-like separations. However, this does not imply a direction for causal effects. Hidden in our conventions for quantization is a connection to the…
Quantum theory is a probabilistic theory with fixed causal structure. General relativity is a deterministic theory but where the causal structure is dynamic. It is reasonable to expect that quantum gravity will be a probabilistic theory…
The Hilbert space formalism describes causality as a statistical relation between initial experimental conditions and final measurement outcomes, expressed by the inner products of state vectors representing these conditions. This…
A general principle of `causal duality' for physical systems, lying at the base of representation theorems for both compound and evolving systems, is proved; formally it is encoded in a quantaloidal setting. Other particular examples of…