Two times or none?

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ridley, Michael, Cohen, Eliahu
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Ridley, Michael
Cohen, Eliahu
author_facet Ridley, Michael
Cohen, Eliahu
contents Attempts to treat time on an equivalent footing with space in quantum mechanics have been apparently dominated by `timeless' approaches, such as the one of Page and Wootters, which allow meaningful discussion of a `time operator'. However, there is an alternative, and significantly less studied approach, due to Bauer, which makes use of the `pseudospin' extension of the state space, effectively adding a backwards-time degree of freedom. This two-time approach allows definition of a `time operator' and moreover bears interesting relations with other time-symmetric formulations of quantum mechanics. We review and compare these approaches to quantum time, emphasizing that there is a subtle choice between the timeless framework and the two-time approach. Finally, we sketch a framework in which the timeless philosophy can be combined with two-time quantum mechanics.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_22264
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Two times or none?
Ridley, Michael
Cohen, Eliahu
Quantum Physics
Attempts to treat time on an equivalent footing with space in quantum mechanics have been apparently dominated by `timeless' approaches, such as the one of Page and Wootters, which allow meaningful discussion of a `time operator'. However, there is an alternative, and significantly less studied approach, due to Bauer, which makes use of the `pseudospin' extension of the state space, effectively adding a backwards-time degree of freedom. This two-time approach allows definition of a `time operator' and moreover bears interesting relations with other time-symmetric formulations of quantum mechanics. We review and compare these approaches to quantum time, emphasizing that there is a subtle choice between the timeless framework and the two-time approach. Finally, we sketch a framework in which the timeless philosophy can be combined with two-time quantum mechanics.
title Two times or none?
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.22264