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arXiv quant-ph/0609190quant-phcond-mat.stat-mechgr-qchep-th
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准经典粗晶化与热力学熵

Quasiclassical Coarse Graining and Thermodynamic Entropy

Murray Gell-Mann, James Hartle

摘要:

我们对宇宙的日常描述是高度粗粒度的,只遵循完美细粒度描述所需的一小部分变量。由于我们有限的观察力和计算能力,经典物理学中的粗糙颗粒化是很自然的。但在封闭系统的现代量子力学中,某些粗粒度的度量是不可避免的,因为没有非平凡的、概率性的、细粒度的描述。本文探讨了这一事实的后果。量子理论允许各种粗粒度的描述,其中一些是相互不兼容的。然而,在大多数情况下,我们感兴趣的是“准经典守恒”的小子集,它是由能量、动量等守恒量和重子数等近似守恒量的小体积密度的平均值范围定义的。这些准经典量的近似守恒导致近似的退相干、可预测性和局部平衡,导致封闭的运动方程组。在任何描述中,信息都是通过粗粒化而牺牲的,粗粒化产生了退相干,并产生了历史的概率。在准经典描述中,为了展示经典运动方程所概括的涌现性,牺牲了更多的信息。适当的熵度量信息的损失。对于“准经典领域”,这与从统计力学中得到的通常的热力学熵有关。对于我们宇宙的初始状态来说,它很低,从那以后一直在增加。

英文摘要:

Our everyday descriptions of the universe are highly coarse-grained, following only a tiny fraction of the variables necessary for a perfectly fine-grained description. Coarse graining in classical physics is made natural by our limited powers of observation and computation. But in the modern quantum mechanics of closed systems, some measure of coarse graining is inescapable because there are no non-trivial, probabilistic, fine-grained descriptions. This essay explores the consequences of that fact. Quantum theory allows for various coarse-grained descriptions some of which are mutually incompatible. For most purposes, however, we are interested in the small subset of ``quasiclassical descriptions'' defined by ranges of values of averages over small volumes of densities of conserved quantities such as energy and momentum and approximately conserved quantities such as baryon number. The near-conservation of these quasiclassical quantities results in approximate decoherence, predictability, and local equilibrium, leading to closed sets of equations of motion. In any description, information is sacrificed through the coarse graining that yields decoherence and gives rise to probabilities for histories. In quasiclassical descriptions, further information is sacrificed in exhibiting the emergent regularities summarized by classical equations of motion. An appropriate entropy measures the loss of information. For a ``quasiclassical realm'' this is connected with the usual thermodynamic entropy as obtained from statistical mechanics. It was low for the initial state of our universe and has been increasing since.

机构、总结、中文摘要均由AI分析而来,可能存在错误,请以论文正文为准。

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