| Abstract: We take up the question why the initial entropy in the universe was small, in the context of evolution of the entropy of a classical system. We note that coarse-graining is a an important aspect of entropy evaluation which can reverse the direction of the increase in entropy, i.e., the direction of thermodynamic arrow of time. Then we investigate the role of decoherence in the selection of coarse-graining and explain how to compute entropy for a decohered
classical system. Finally, we argue that the requirement of low initial entropy imposes constraints on the decoherence process.
Time: Thursday, November 27, 2014 at 11:00 in Larak Seminar Room
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