Quantum Clocks Tick Faster: Entanglement, Contextuality, and the Flow of Time
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2512.09100 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 9 Dec 2025] Title:Quantum Clocks Tick Faster: Entanglement, Contextuality, and the Flow of Time Authors:Karl Svozil View a PDF of the paper titled Quantum Clocks Tick Faster: Entanglement, Contextuality, and the Flow of Time, by Karl Svozil View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Building on the recent proposal that a single ``bona fide'' clock suffices to define spacetime's metric, we introduce an Entangled Clock protocol based on singlet-state correlations. Invoking Zeilinger's Foundational Principle, we argue that while the local flow of time, operationally defined as a sequence of detector ``ticks,'' is irreducibly random (one bit per elementary system), the synchronized flow between spatially separated observers depends on their measurement geometry. Comparing the quantum prediction for the coincidence rate with Peres' classical ``bomb fragment'' model, we find that at obtuse relative angles the entangled clock exhibits a 13 percent higher synchronized tick rate than this linear classical benchmark. This ``temporal acceleration'' is linked to contextuality: following Peres, ``unperformed experiments have no results,'' and quantum systems are not constrained to maintain consistency with all counterfactual measurement settings. We stress, however, that for any single measurement angle a suitably tailored classical model can reproduce the quantum rate. The genuinely nonclassical character of the entangled clock emerges only when correlations at several angles are considered simultaneously and are shown to violate Bell-type inequalities. In this sense, the violation of Bell-type bounds serves as a certification that the shared time standard is genuinely quantum. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2512.09100 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2512.09100v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2512.09100 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Karl Svozil [view email] [v1] Tue, 9 Dec 2025 20:33:04 UTC (12 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Quantum Clocks Tick Faster: Entanglement, Contextuality, and the Flow of Time, by Karl SvozilView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2025-12 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?)