Related papers: Can the Salecker-Wigner clock be microscopic?

It is shown in the present note that the degree of the complexity of the time-reading process of the Salecker--Wigner clock depends on the size of the clock. This dependence leads to a relation between the size and the accuracy of the…

A clock is, from an information-theoretic perspective, a system that emits information about time. One may therefore ask whether the theory of information imposes any constraints on the maximum precision of clocks. Here we show a…

According to general relativity, clocks are the basic measuring devices needed to probe spacetime geometry. However, it is generally accepted that the mass of clocks capable of measuring small time intervals must be bounded from below. In…

Understanding different aspects of time is at the core of many areas in theoretical physics. Minimal models of continuous stochastic and quantum clocks have been proposed to explore fundamental limitations on the performance of timekeeping…

Continuous clocks, i.e. the clocks that measure time in a continuous manner, are regarded as an essential component of sensing technology. Precision and recurrence time are two basic features of continuous clocks. In this paper, in the…

We critically discuss the measure of very short time intervals. By means of a Gedankenexperiment, we describe an ideal clock based on the occurrence of completely random events. Many previous thought experiments have suggested fundamental…

Time plays a fundamental role in our ability to make sense of the physical laws in the world around us. The nature of time has puzzled people -- from the ancient Greeks to the present day -- resulting in a long running debate between…

A quantum clock must satisfy two basic constraints. The first is a bound on the time resolution of the clock given by the difference between its maximum and minimum energy eigenvalues. The second follows from Holevo's bound on how much…

Time plays a crucial role in the intuitive understanding of the world around us. Within quantum mechanics, however, time is not usually treated as an observable quantity; it enters merely as a parameter in the laws of motion of physical…

Physical systems are usually assumed to evolve relative to an external time parameter, which is problematic because in quantum theory that parameter is not a physical observable. Page & Wootters (1984) solved this by proposing that the…

In the wake of our recent work on cyclotomic effects in quantum phase locking [M. Planat and H. C. Rosu, Phys. Lett. A 315, 1 (2003)], we briefly discuss here a cyclotomic extension of the Salecker and Wigner quantum clock. We also hint on…

Time remains one of the least well understood concepts in physics, most notably in quantum mechanics. A central goal is to find the fundamental limits of measuring time. One of the main obstacles is the fact that time is not an observable…

We propose a quantum method to judge whether two spatially separated clocks have been synchronized within a specific accuracy $\sigma$. If the measurement result of the experiment is obviously a nonzero value, the time difference between…

Scalar-tensor quintessence models can be constrained by identifying suitable cosmic clocks which allow to select confidence regions for cosmological parameters. In particular, we constrain the characterizing parameters of non-minimally…

In Gedankenexperiment mentioned in the title, the imprecision in space-time measurement is related to the spreading of clock's wave-function with the passage of time required for the measurement. Special relativity puts a bound on the…

The conflict between quantum theory and the theory of relativity is exemplified in their treatment of time. We examine the ways in which their conceptions differ, and describe a semiclassical clock model combining elements of both theories.…

Without addressing the measurement problem (i.e. what causes the wave function to ``collapse'', or to ``branch'', or a history to become realized, or a property to actualize), I discuss the problem of the timing of the quantum measurement:…

We critically discuss the measure of very short time intervals. By means of a "gedankenexperiment", we describe an ideal clock based on the occurrence of completely random events. We show that the minimum time interval Delta t that this…

A cyclic nature of quantum mechanical clock is discussed as ``quantization of time." Quantum mechanical clock is seen to be equivalent to the relativistic classical clock.

We report that entangled pairs of quantum clocks (non-degenerate quantum bits) can be used as a specialized detector for precisely measuring difference of proper-times that each constituent quantum clock experiences. We describe why the…