Related papers: Entropy of Classical Histories
We introduce a definition of coarse-grained entropy that unifies measurement-based (observational entropy) and max-entropy-based (Jaynes) approaches to coarse-graining, by identifying physical constraints with information theoretic priors.…
We extend classical coarse-grained entropy, commonly used in many branches of physics, to the quantum realm. We find two coarse-grainings, one using measurements of local particle numbers and then total energy, and the second using local…
We take up the question why the initial entropy in the universe was small, in the context of evolution of the entropy of a classical system. We note that coarse-graining is a an important aspect of entropy evaluation which can reverse the…
Our everyday descriptions of the universe are highly coarse-grained, following only a tiny fraction of the variables necessary for a perfectly fine-grained description. Coarse graining in classical physics is made natural by our limited…
We develop the framework of classical Observational entropy, which is a mathematically rigorous and precise framework for non-equilibrium thermodynamics, explicitly defined in terms of a set of observables. Observational entropy can be seen…
The usual canonical Hamiltonian or Lagrangian formalism of classical mechanics applied to macroscopic systems describes energy conserving adiabatic motion. If irreversible diabatic processes are to be included, then the law of increasing…
Decoherent histories quantum theory is reformulated with the assumption that there is one "real" fine-grained history, specified in a preferred complete set of sum-over-histories variables. This real history is described by embedding it in…
We investigate the detailed properties of Observational entropy, introduced by \v{S}afr\'{a}nek et al. [Phys. Rev. A 99, 010101 (2019)] as a generalization of Boltzmann entropy to quantum mechanics. This quantity can involve multiple…
These notes provide a brief primer on the basic aspects of "observational entropy" (also known as "quantum coarse-grained entropy"), a general framework for applying the concept of coarse-graining to quantum systems. We review the basic…
Within the decoherent histories formulation of quantum mechanics, we investigate necessary conditions for decoherence of arbitrarily long histories. We prove that fine-grained histories of arbitrary length decohere for all classical initial…
We investigate how classical predictability of the coarse-grained evolution of the quantum baker's map depends on the character of the coarse-graining. Our analysis extends earlier work by Brun and Hartle [Phys. Rev. D 60, 123503 (1999)] to…
G\'acs' coarse-grained algorithmic entropy leverages universal computation to quantify the information content of any given physical state. Unlike the Boltzmann and Gibbs-Shannon entropies, it requires no prior commitment to macrovariables…
Phenomenological arrows of time can be traced to a past low-entropy state. Does this imply the universe was in an improbable state in the past? I suggest a different possibility: past low-entropy depends on the coarse-graining implicit in…
We investigate fundamental connections between thermodynamics and quantum information theory. First, we show that the operational framework of thermal operations is nonequivalent to the framework of Gibbs-preserving maps, and we comment on…
The origin of the phenomenological deterministic laws that approximately govern the quasiclassical domain of familiar experience is considered in the context of the quantum mechanics of closed systems such as the universe as a whole. We…
The origin of classical predictability is investigated for the one dimensional harmonic chain considered as a closed quantum mechanical system. By comparing the properties of a family of coarse-grained descriptions of the chain, we conclude…
A recently proposed history formalism is used to define temporal entanglement in quantum systems, and compute its entropy. The procedure is based on the time-reduction of the history density operator, and allows a symmetrical treatment of…
Using a game theory approach and a new extremal problem, Gibbs formula is proved in a most simple and general way for the classical mechanics case. A corresponding conjecture on the asymptotics of the classical entropy is formulated. For…
We study quantum coarse-grained entropy and demonstrate that the gap in entropy between local and global coarse-grainings is a natural generalization of entanglement entropy to mixed states and multipartite systems. This "quantum…
Defining the entropy of classical particles raises a number of paradoxes and ambiguities, some of which have been known for over a century. Several, such as Gibbs' paradox, involve the fact that classical particles are distinguishable, and…