Quantum-Entropy Physics

Abstract

All the laws of physics are time-reversible. Time arrow emerges only when ensembles of classical particles are treated probabilistically, outside of physics laws, and the entropy and the second law of thermodynamics are introduced. In quantum physics, no mechanism for a time arrow has been proposed despite its intrinsic probabilistic nature. In consequence, one cannot explain why an electron in an excited state will "spontaneously" transition into a ground state as a photon is created and emitted, instead of continuing in its reversible unitary evolution. To address such phenomena, we introduce an entropy for quantum physics, which will conduce to the emergence of a time arrow. The entropy is a measure of randomness over the degrees of freedom of a quantum state. It is dimensionless; it is a relativistic scalar, it is invariant under coordinate transformation of position and momentum that maintain conjugate properties and under CPT transformations; and its minimum is positive due to the uncertainty principle. To excogitate why some quantum physical processes cannot take place even though they obey conservation laws, we partition the set of all evolutions of an initial state into four blocks, based on whether the entropy is (i) increasing but not a constant, (ii) decreasing but not a constant, (iii) a constant, (iv) oscillating. We propose a law that in quantum physics entropy (weakly) increases over time. Thus, evolutions in the set (ii) are disallowed, and evolutions in set (iv) are barred from completing an oscillation period by instantaneously transitioning to a new state. This law for quantum physics limits physical scenarios beyond conservation laws, providing causality reasoning by defining a time arrow.