English

Time-System Entanglement and Special Relativity

Quantum Physics 2024-02-20 v3 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology High Energy Physics - Theory

Abstract

We know that space and time are treated almost equally in classical physics, but we also know that this is not the case for quantum mechanics. A quantum description of both space and time is important to really understand the quantum nature of reality. The Page-Wootters mechanism of quantum time is a promising starting point, according to which the evolution of the quantum system is described by the entanglement between it and quantum temporal degrees of freedom. In this paper, we consider a qubit clock that is entangled with a quantum system due to the Wigner rotation induced by Lorentz transformation. We study how this time-system entanglement depends on the rapidity of the Lorentz boost. We consider the case of a spin-1/2 particle with Gaussian momentum distribution as a concrete example. We also compare the time-system entanglement entropy with the spin-momentum entanglement entropy and find that the former is smaller than the latter.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2212.13348,
  title  = {Time-System Entanglement and Special Relativity},
  author = {Ngo Phuc Duc Loc},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2212.13348},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

7 pages + 7 figures; published version

R2 v1 2026-06-28T07:53:32.355Z