Emergent Time and Time Travel in Quantum Physics

Author:

Alonso-Serrano Ana12ORCID,Schuster Sebastian3ORCID,Visser Matt4ORCID

Affiliation:

1. Institut für Physik, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Zum Großen Windkanal 6, 12489 Berlin, Germany

2. Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut), Potsdam Science Park, Am Mühlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam, Germany

3. Ústav Teoretické Fyziky, Matematicko-Fyzikální Fakulta, Univerzita Karlova, V Holešovičkách 747/2, 180 00 Praha, Czech Republic

4. School of Mathematics and Statistics, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington 6140, New Zealand

Abstract

Entertaining the possibility of time travel will invariably challenge dearly-held concepts in fundamental physics. It becomes relatively easy to construct multiple logical contradictions using differing starting points from various well-established fields of physics. Sometimes, the interpretation is that only a full theory of quantum gravity will be able to settle these logical contradictions. Even then, it remains unclear if the multitude of problems could be overcome. Yet as definitive as this seems to the notion of time travel in physics, such recourse to quantum gravity comes with its own, long-standing challenge to most of these counter-arguments to time travel: These arguments rely on time, while quantum gravity is (in)famously stuck with the problem of time. One attempt to answer this problem within the canonical framework resulted in the Page–Wootters formalism, and its recent gauge-theoretic reinterpretation as an emergent notion of time. Herein, we will begin a program to study toy models implementing the Hamiltonian constraint in quantum theory, with an aim toward understanding what an emergent notion of time can tell us about the (im)possibility of time travel.

Funder

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Spanish Project

Czech Science Foundation

Marsden Fund

Publisher

MDPI AG

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