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Related papers: Probability as a physical motive

200 papers

The principle called information causality has been used to deduce Tsirelson's bound. In this paper we derive information causality from monotonicity of divergence and relate it to more basic principles related to measurements on…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-02-10 Peter Harremoës

It is often claimed that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric and that therefore our experience of the passage of time is an illusion. This paper will critically discuss these claims and show that they are…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-04-20 Barbara Drossel

Every production-recycling iteration accumulates an inevitable proportion of its matter-energy in the environment, lest the production process itself would be a system in perpetual motion, violating the second law of Thermodynamics. Such…

Physics and Society · Physics 2013-11-06 Henrique N. Sá Earp , Ademar R. Romeiro

We describe a new class of models of quantum space-time based on energetic causal sets and show that under natural conditions space-time emerges from them. These are causal sets whose causal links are labelled by energy and momentum and…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2016-02-22 Marina Cortês , Lee Smolin

The paper moves a step towards the full integration of statistical mechanics and information theory. Starting from the assumption that the thermodynamical system is composed by particles whose quantized energies can be modelled as…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-02-01 Arnaldo Spalvieri

We study the statistical underpinnings of life. We question some common assumptions about the thermodynamics of life and illustrate how, contrary to widespread belief, even in a closed system entropy growth can accompany an increase in…

Biological Physics · Physics 2019-08-23 Kate Jeffery , Robert Pollack , Carlo Rovelli

The MaxEnt solutions are shown to display a variety of behaviors (beyond the traditional and customary exponential one) if adequate dynamical information is inserted into the concomitant entropic-variational principle. In particular, we…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2015-06-03 A. Hernando , A. Plastino , A. R. Plastino

Statistical thermodynamics is valuable as a conceptual structure that shapes our thinking about equilibrium thermodynamic states. A cloud of unresolved questions surrounding the foundations of the theory could lead an impartial observer to…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2025-10-31 O. B. Ericok , J. K. Mason

The Free-Energy Principle (FEP) [1-3] has been adopted in a variety of ambitious proposals that aim to characterize all adaptive, sentient, and cognitive systems within a unifying framework. Judging by the amount of attention it has…

Neurons and Cognition · Quantitative Biology 2024-01-18 Zahra Sheikhbahaee , Adam Safron , Casper Hesp , Guillaume Dumas

Partial orders have been used to model several experimental setups, going from classical thermodynamics and general relativity to the quantum realm with its resource theories. In order to study such experimental setups, one typically…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2025-09-18 Pedro Hack , Daniel A. Braun , Sebastian Gottwald

The local entropy of a nonequilibrium system of independent fermions is investigated, and analyzed in the context of the laws of thermodynamics. It is shown that the local temperature and chemical potential can only be expressed in terms of…

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics · Physics 2017-03-08 Charles A. Stafford , Abhay Shastry

In this tutorial we review the essential arguments behing entropic inference. We focus on the epistemological notion of information and its relation to the Bayesian beliefs of rational agents. The problem of updating from a prior to a…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2015-05-20 Ariel Caticha

Living systems maintain or increase local order by working against the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Thermodynamic consistency is restored as they dissipate heat, thereby increasing the net entropy of their environment. Recently introduced…

Biological Physics · Physics 2021-05-03 Dominic J. Skinner , Jörn Dunkel

Entropy is one of the key thermodynamic variables reflecting changes in the state of matter. Unlike other thermodynamic variables, it is well-defined also for nonequilibrium steady states through its relation to information. Applying this…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2026-04-15 Haim Diamant , Gil Ariel

In this PhD thesis the ancient question of determinism ('Does every event have a cause ?') will be re-examined. In the philosophy of science and physics communities the orthodox position states that the physical world is indeterministic:…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-03-04 Louis Vervoort

Some possible (re)sources of indeterminism and randomness encountered in physics are enumerated. These gaps in the physical laws, if they exist, could possibly be exploited for dualistic interfaces. We also speculate that physical laws and…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2015-02-25 Karl Svozil

In this article, we review a general theoretical framework of thermodynamics of information on the basis of Bayesian networks. This framework can describe a broad class of nonequilibrium dynamics of multiple interacting systems with complex…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2018-07-23 Sosuke Ito , Takahiro Sagawa

Information based thermodynamic logic is revisited. It consists of two parts: Part A applies the modern theory of probability in which an arbitrary convex function \phi is employed as an analytic "device" to express information as…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2023-12-07 Bing Miao , Hong Qian , Yong-Shi Wu

Probability is distinguished into two kinds: physical and epistemic, also, but less accurately, called objective and subjective. Simple postulates are given for physical probability, the only novel one being a locality condition. Translated…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-05-13 Simon Saunders

We present some novel thermodynamic ideas based on the Maupertuis principle. By considering Hamiltonians written in terms of appropriate action-angle variables we show that thermal states can be characterized by the action variables and by…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2008-04-15 V. Garcia-Morales , J. Pellicer , J. A. Manzanares