Related papers: Boltzmann's H-theorem and time irreversibility
It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations through which the fundamental laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergence of…
The issue of how time reversible microscopic dynamics gives rise to macroscopic irreversible processes has been a recurrent issue in Physics since the time of Boltzmann whose ideas shaped, and essentially resolved, such an apparent…
It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable Universe are irreversible, whereas the equations in which the laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergency of irreversibility from the…
Time-reversal had always been assumed to be a symmetry of physics at the fundamental level. In this paper we will explore the violations of time-reversal symmetry at the fundamental level and the consequences on thermodynamic systems.…
We investigate temporal evolution of von Neumann's entropy in exemplary quantum mechanical systems and show that it grows in systems evolving with incrementally increasing decoherence during scattering processes. We demonstrate that the…
The Boltzmann-Loschmidt dispute of 1876 questioned the possibility of a statistical irreversible description by time reversible classical equations of motion of atoms. Here we show analytically and numerically that the quantum chaos…
The irreversibility in a statistical system is traced to its probabilistic evolution, and the molecular chaos assumption is not its unique consequence as is commonly believed. Under the assumption that the rate of change of the each…
A resolution of the Loschmidt paradox on the Boltzmann H theorem is proposed, based on some new concepts concerning motion backwards in time. The key to this resolution, taken from our interpretation of motion backwards in time, is the…
In this report we discuss the organization of different levels of nature and the corresponding space-time structures by the consideration of a particular problem of time irreversibility. The fundamental time irreversibility problem consists…
The issue of irreversibility in a universe with time-reversal-symmetric laws is a central problem in physics. % , and, in particular, to statistical mechanics, information theory and quantum thermodynamics. In this letter, we discuss for…
An attempt is made to de-mystify the apparent "paradox" between microscopic time revsersibility and macroscopic time irreversibility. It is our common experience that a hot cup of coffee cools down to room temperature and it never…
We review Bohr's reasoning in the Bohr-Einstein debate on the photon box experiment. The essential point of his reasoning leads us to an uncertainty relation between the proper time and the rest mass of the clock. It is shown that this…
In attempting to derive irreversible macroscopic thermodynamics from reversible microscopic dynamics, Boltzmann inadvertently smuggled in a premise that assumed the very irreversibility he was trying to prove: 'molecular chaos.' The program…
The time reversal and irreversibility in conventional quantum mechanics are compared with those of the rigged Hilbert space quantum mechanics. We discuss the time evolution of Gamow and Gamow-Jordan vectors and show that the rigged Hilbert…
This work explores Boltzmann's time hypothesis, which associates the perceived direction of "time flow" with the second law of thermodynamics. We discuss mechanisms that can be responsible for the action of the second law, for directional…
We make precise sense of the idea of "molecular chaos" through algorithmic randomness of microscopic trajectories, and ground macroscopic irreversibility in the lack of symmetry under time reversal of this property. This concept of…
We review various contributions on the fundamental work of Lanford deriving the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics in the low density limit. We focus especially on the assumptions made on the initial data and on how they encode…
Huw Price has proposed an argument that suggests a time-symmetric ontology for quantum theory must necessarily be retrocausal, i.e. it must involve influences that travel backwards in time. One of Price's assumptions is that the quantum…
The question of how irreversibility can emerge as a generic phenomena when the underlying mechanical theory is reversible has been a long-standing fundamental problem for both classical and quantum mechanics. We describe a mechanism for the…
The Boltzmann H-theorem implies that the solution to the Boltzmann equation tends to an equilibrium, that is, a Maxwellian when time tends to infinity. This has been proved in varies settings when the initial energy is finite. However, when…