On the Emergence of Time and Space in Closed Quantum Systems

Quantum Physics arXiv:2512.08120 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 8 Dec 2025] Title:On the Emergence of Time and Space in Closed Quantum Systems Authors:Tommaso Favalli View a PDF of the paper titled On the Emergence of Time and Space in Closed Quantum Systems, by Tommaso Favalli View PDF Abstract:Time, space and entanglement are the main characters in this work. Their nature is still a great mystery in physics and we study here the possibility that these three phenomena are closely connected, showing how entanglement can be at the basis of the emergence of time and space within closed quantum systems. We revisit and extend the Page and Wootters theory that was originally introduced in order to describe the emergence of time through entanglement between subsystems in a globally static, quantum Universe. In the book, after providing a complete review of the salient aspects of the theory, we establish a connection with recent research on the foundations of statistical mechanics and we propose a new understanding of the thermalization process. Furthermore, we generalize the framework in order describe the spatial degree of freedom and we provide a model of 3+1 dimensional, quantum spacetime emerging from entanglement among different subsystems in a globally "timeless" and "positionless" Universe. Finally, via the Page and Wootters theory, the evolution of quantum clocks within a gravitational field is treated and a time dilation effect is obtained in agreement with the Schwarzschild solution. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) Cite as: arXiv:2512.08120 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2512.08120v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.08120 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Journal reference: T. Favalli, On the Emergence of Time and Space in Closed Quantum Systems, Springer Cham, 2024 Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52352-6 Focus to learn more DOI(s) linking to related resources Submission history From: Tommaso Favalli [view email] [v1] Mon, 8 Dec 2025 23:58:11 UTC (1,057 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled On the Emergence of Time and Space in Closed Quantum Systems, by Tommaso FavalliView PDFTeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-12 Change to browse by: gr-qc References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)