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While the microscopic laws of physics are often symmetric under time reversal, most natural processes that we observe are not. The emergent asymmetry between typical and time-reversed processes is referred to as the arrow of time. In…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-12-23 Luis Pedro García-Pintos , Yi-Kai Liu , Alexey V. Gorshkov

Deriving an arrow of time from time-reversal symmetric microscopic dynamics is a fundamental open problem in many areas of physics, ranging from cosmology, to particle physics, to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Here we focus on…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-01-31 Thomas Guff , Chintalpati Umashankar Shastry , Andrea Rocco

Scientific discussions of the arrow of time often get quite confusing due to highly complex systems they deal with. Popular literature then often coveys messages that tend to get lost in translation. The purpose of this note is to demystify…

Popular Physics · Physics 2024-08-29 Zura Kakushadze

The extrinsic quantum mechanical arrow of time is understood to be a consequence of the interaction between quantum systems and their environment. A choice of boundary conditions for the Schr\"odinger equation results in a different time…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-06-30 P. W. Bryant

This paper is a sequel to the series of papers [gr-qc/9409010, gr-qc/9505034, gr-qc/9603022, gr-qc/9609035, gr-qc/9609046, gr-qc/9704033, gr-qc/9704038, gr-qc/9708014, gr-qc/9802016]. The problem of the meaning of objective a priori…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2007-05-23 Vladimir S. Mashkevich

It is one of the most important and long-standing issues of physics to derive the irreversibility out of a time-reversal symmetric equation of motion. The present paper considers the breaking of the time-reversal symmetry in open quantum…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-04-10 Naomichi Hatano , Gonzalo Ordonez

The familiar textbook quantum mechanics of laboratory measurements incorporates a quantum mechanical arrow of time --- the direction in time in which state vector reduction operates. This arrow is usually assumed to coincide with the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-06-12 James B. Hartle

We point out that time's arrow is naturally induced by quantum mechanical evolution, whenever the systems have a very large number ${\cal N}$ of non-degenerate states and a Hamiltonian bounded from below. When ${\cal N}$ is finite, the…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2024-07-03 Nemanja Kaloper

Different approaches to quantum gravity, such as loop quantum cosmology and group field theory, predict the resolution of the initial cosmological singularity via a bounce: a regular spacetime region that connects the expanding branch of…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2024-11-01 Marco de Cesare

We reconsider the old but yet unsolved problems, origin of the universe and the arrow of time. We show that only the closed universe is free from the singularity with the arrow of time symmetric with respect to the maximal size of the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-10-13 Takeshi Fukuyama

Within the general formalism of quantum theory irreversibility and the arrow of time in the evolution of various physical systems are studied. Irreversible behavior often manifests itself in the guise of entropy production. This motivates…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-02-10 Jürg Fröhlich

We discuss how the classical notions of time and causal structure may emerge together with quantum-mechanical probabilities from a universal quantum state. For this, the process of decoherence between semiclassical branches is important.…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2025-06-24 Leonardo Chataignier , Claus Kiefer , Mritunjay Tyagi

The question of the origin of time's arrow is a major outstanding problem in physics. Here we present a mechanism for the emergence of a cosmological arrow of time from a confinement--deconfinement transition in a $ Z_2 $ lattice gauge…

General Physics · Physics 2026-05-19 Deepak Vaid

For decades, researchers have sought to understand how the irreversibility of the surrounding world emerges from the seemingly time symmetric, fundamental laws of physics. Quantum mechanics conjectured a clue that final irreversibility is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-07-22 A. V. Lebedev , V. M. Vinokur

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…

High Energy Physics - Theory · Physics 2007-05-23 Vadim V. Asadov , Oleg V. Kechkin

In this paper I suggest a possible explanation for the asymmetry of time. In the case that I study, the dynamical laws and the boundary conditions are symmetric, but the behavior of time is not. The underlying mechanism is statistical and…

General Physics · Physics 2014-07-23 Martin Tamm

The arrow of time dilemma: the laws of physics are invariant for time inversion, whereas the familiar phenomena we see everyday are not (i.e. entropy increases). I show that, within a quantum mechanical framework, all phenomena which leave…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2010-04-22 Lorenzo Maccone

It is widely believed that special initial conditions must be imposed on any time-symmetric law if its solutions are to exhibit behavior of any kind that defines an `arrow of time'. We show that this is not so. The simplest non-trivial…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2015-08-05 Julian Barbour , Tim Koslowski , Flavio Mercati

The direct and indirect experimental proofs of a strong time invariance violation in optics are discussed. Time noninvariance for present day becomes the only real physical base for explanation the origin of the most phenomena in nonlinear…

General Physics · Physics 2007-05-23 Vladimir A. Kuz'menko

The arrow of time refers to the curious asymmetry that distinguishes the future from the past. Reversing the Arrow of Time argues that there is an intimate link between the symmetries of 'time itself' and time reversal symmetry in physical…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2022-12-08 Bryan W Roberts