The irreversibility of relativistic time-dilation

Abstract

The fluctuation relations, which characterize irreversible processes in Nature, are among the most important results in non-equilibrium physics. In short, these relations say that it is exponentially unlikely for us to observe a time-reversed process and, thus, establish the thermodynamic arrow of time pointing from low to high entropy. On the other hand, fundamental physical theories are invariant under time-reversal symmetry. Although in Newtonian and quantum physics the emergence of irreversible processes, as well as fluctuation relations, is relatively well understood, many problems arise when relativity enters the game. In this work, by considering a specific class of spacetimes, we explore the question of how the time-dilation effect enters into the fluctuation relations. We conclude that a positive entropy production emerges as a consequence of both the special relativistic and the gravitational (enclosed in the equivalence principle) time-dilation effects.

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Thermodynamic entropy production in the dynamical Casimir effect
• Quantum fluctuation theorem in a curved spacetime
• Decoherence of a composite particle induced by a weak quantized gravitational field
• Entropy production due to spacetime fluctuations
• Landauer principle and the second law in a relativistic communication scenario
• Geometry of restricted information: the case of quantum thermodynamics