2012
DOI: 10.1103/physrevd.85.123517
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How unitary cosmology generalizes thermodynamics and solves the inflationary entropy problem

Abstract: We analyze cosmology assuming unitary quantum mechanics, using a tripartite partition into system, observer and environment degrees of freedom. This generalizes the second law of thermodynamics to "The system's entropy can't decrease unless it interacts with the observer, and it can't increase unless it interacts with the environment." The former follows from the quantum Bayes Theorem we derive. We show that because of the long-range entanglement created by cosmological inflation, the cosmic entropy decreases … Show more

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Cited by 40 publications
(60 citation statements)
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“…This highlights a more general crucial feature of quantum theory: in order to obtain predictions that are in accord with the classical world around us, one must often consider an open quantum system, see for example [32,33] for more discussion. As one of the main points of this work we argue that an unobservable environmental sector and in particular decoherence can also qualitatively change the predictions of semi-classical gravity, as advocated also in [34].…”
Section: Jcap11(2016)026mentioning
confidence: 55%
“…This highlights a more general crucial feature of quantum theory: in order to obtain predictions that are in accord with the classical world around us, one must often consider an open quantum system, see for example [32,33] for more discussion. As one of the main points of this work we argue that an unobservable environmental sector and in particular decoherence can also qualitatively change the predictions of semi-classical gravity, as advocated also in [34].…”
Section: Jcap11(2016)026mentioning
confidence: 55%
“…Bob receives and identifies a token, which for successful communication must be the same one transferred, measures its state, and then identifies and measures the state of his local frame to make the comparison. At each step in the cycle, all degrees of freedom not being measured in that step are part of the "environment" for the measurements being made [9]. This redefinition of the environment between measurements implements decoherence [10], a point we will return to in §5 below.…”
Section: System Identification Formalismmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Note that there is no choice of measurement basis in this formulation. The environment E comprises, in this case, all degrees of freedom of W except those of S. With these definitions of S and E, (1) embodies the assumption of an unobserved environment that justifies tracing over the state of E in the environment as information sink formulation of decoherence [4,5,6,7]; the interpretation of (1) in the alternative environment as witness formulation is considered in §5 below.…”
Section: Reference Observables and System Identificationmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Note that these definitions are consistent with W being non-separable. With these definitions, the environment E P of P contains R, as standardly assumed when the environment of the pointer state of an apparatus, for example, is assumed to include the rest of the apparatus [6,7].…”
Section: Coarse-grained Measurements As Entanglement Swapsmentioning
confidence: 99%
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