Time as an illusion created by entanglement in Physical Review A featured in WIRED

ISC researchers Alessandro Coppo and Paola Verrucchi, in collaboration with Prof. A. Cuccoli from the University of Florence, have published an intriguing study in Physical Review A. The work has garnered attention from prominent publications such as New Scientist and Wired.

They consider  a simple and physically relevant example  where the time evolution of a system can  be determined by the entanglement with its clock. In this framework, they show that the standard notion of time emerges when conditions related to macroscopicity are met by the clock alone, or by both the clock and the evolving system. This emergung behavior encompasses the classical dynamics, as well as the phase-space and the trajectories on it.

The work  follows the route outlined in a previous  interesting article published in Nature Communications, briefly presented here.

(a) Graphical representation of the marginal probability distribution for a classical oscillator to be in a state parameterized by q given that its clock is in a state identified by the t. (b) Its section at any constant time, t. (c) Contour plot of the above distribution. (d) Emergence of the classical dynamics vs .