Out of equilibrium: understanding cosmological evolution to lower-entropy states

Abstract

Despite the importance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is not absolute. Statistical mechanics implies that, given sufficient time, systems near equilibrium will spontaneously fluctuate into lower-entropy states, locally reversing the thermodynamic arrow of time. We study the time development of such fluctuations, especially the very large fluctuations relevant to cosmology. Under fairly general assumptions, the most likely history of a fluctuation out of equilibrium is simply the CPT conjugate of the most likely way a system relaxes back to equilibrium. We use this idea to elucidate the spacetime structure of various fluctuations in (stable and metastable) de Sitter space and thermal anti-de Sitter space.

27 pages, 11 figures

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Toward a Holographic Theory for General Spacetimes
• Vacuum Structure and the Arrow of Time
• Typical and extreme entropies of long-lived isolated quantum systems
• Bubble velocities and oscillon precursors in first-order phase transitions
• Understanding Gravitational Entropy of Black Holes: A New Proposal via Curvature Invariants
• On Black Hole Thermodynamics, Singularity, and Gravitational Entropy
• Understanding black hole evaporation using explicitly computed Penrose diagrams
• Probabilistic bound on extreme fluctuations in isolated quantum systems
• Inflation as a Solution to the Early Universe Entropy Problem
• State-to-State Cosmology: a new view on the cosmological arrow of time and the past hypothesis
• Disentangling Boltzmann brains, the time-asymmetry of memory, and the second law