Local arrows of time in quantum many-body systems

Quantum Physics arXiv:2511.09758 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 12 Nov 2025] Title:Local arrows of time in quantum many-body systems Authors:Andrew G. Yates, Jordan Cotler, Nishad Maskara, Mikhail D. Lukin View a PDF of the paper titled Local arrows of time in quantum many-body systems, by Andrew G. Yates and 3 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We demonstrate that in quantum many-body systems, local arrows of time can differ from the global time $t$ induced by Hamiltonian evolution. That is, within a quantum many-body system, the flow of time can be relative to each observer or by proxy each local subsystem. We provide a definition of local arrows of time in quantum many-body systems, and explain their relation to spacetime quantum entropies. Then we give a variety of numerical and analytical examples which explore different ways in which local arrows of time can manifest in quantum many-body dynamics, including exotic arrows of time arising from quantum thermalization and quantum error correction. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) Cite as: arXiv:2511.09758 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2511.09758v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.09758 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Andrew Yates [view email] [v1] Wed, 12 Nov 2025 21:42:07 UTC (2,411 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Local arrows of time in quantum many-body systems, by Andrew G. Yates and 3 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-11 Change to browse by: cond-mat cond-mat.str-el 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?)