Equilibration and locality

Abstract

Experiments motivated by predictions of quantum mechanics indicate non-trivial correlations between spacelike-separated measurements. The phenomenon is referred to as a violation of stronglocality and, after Einstein, called ghostly action at a distance. An intriguing and previously unasked question is how the evolution of an assembly of particles to equilibrium-state relates to strong-locality.More specifically, whether, with this respect, indistinguishable particles differ from distinguishable ones.To address the question, we introduce a Markov-chain based framework over a finite set of microstates. For the first time, we formulate conditions needed to obey the particle transport-and strong-locality for indistinguishable particles.Models which obey transport-locality and lead to equilibrium-state are considered. We show that it is possible to construct models obeying and violating strong-locality both for indistinguishable particles and for distinguishable ones. However, we find that only for distinguishable particles strongly-local evolution to equilibrium is possible without breaking the microstate-symmetry. This is the strongest symmetry one can impose and leads to the shortest equilibration time.We hope that the results presented here may provide a new perspective on a violation of stronglocality, and the developed framework will help in future studies. Specifically they may help to interpret results on high-energy nuclear collisions indicating a fast equilibration of indistinguishable particles.