Time as a Consequence of Internal Coherence

Abstract

Time has been an elusive concept to grasp. Although we do not yet understand it properly, there has been advances made in regards to how we can explain it. One such advance is the Page-Wootters mechanism. In this mechanism time is seen as an inaccessible coordinate and the apparently passage of time arises as a consequence of correlations between the subsystems of a global state. Here we propose a measure that captures the relational character of the mechanism, showing that the internal coherence is the necessary ingredient for the emergence of time in the Page-Wootters model. Also, we connect it to results in quantum thermodynamics, showing that it is directly related to the extractable work from quantum coherence.

References in corpus (20)

• Quantifying Coherence
• Quantum Coherence as a Resource
• Reference frames, superselection rules, and quantum information
• Description of quantum coherence in thermodynamic processes requires constraints beyond free energy
• Work extraction and thermodynamics for individual quantum systems
• How to quantify coherence: Distinguishing speakable and unspeakable notions
• The extraction of work from quantum coherence
• Quantum speed limits, coherence and asymmetry
• Measuring the quality of a quantum reference frame: the relative entropy of frameness
• Quantum Discord and the Geometry of Bell-Diagonal States
• Quantum Time
• Tradeoff between extractable mechanical work, accessible entanglement, and ability to act as a reference system, under arbitrary superselection rules
• Conditional probabilities with Dirac observables and the problem of time in quantum gravity
• Time from quantum entanglement: an experimental illustration
• Quantizing time: Interacting clocks and systems
• Evolution without evolution, and without ambiguities
• Clock-work trade-off relation for coherence in quantum thermodynamics
• History state formalism for Dirac's theory
• Quantum asymmetry between time and space
• Relational time in anyonic systems

Cited by in corpus (12)

• History state formalism for scalar particles
• Engineering a heat engine purely driven by quantum coherence
• Spacetime Quantum Actions
• Entanglement-asymmetry correspondence for internal quantum reference frames
• Quantum Space, Quantum Time, and Relativistic Quantum Mechanics
• A model of quantum spacetime
• Quantifying resources for Page-Wootters mechanism: Shared asymmetry as relative entropy of entanglement
• Robustness of the Page-Wootters construction across different pictures, states of the universe and system-clock interactions
• Infinitesimal reference frames suffice to determine the asymmetry properties of a quantum system
• Wigner's friend and the quasi-ideal clock
• Emergent dynamics from entangled mixed states
• Parallel-in-time quantum simulation via Page and Wootters quantum time