How unitary cosmology generalizes thermodynamics and solves the inflationary entropy problem

Max Tegmark
Phys. Rev. D 85, 123517 – Published 11 June 2012

Abstract

We analyze cosmology assuming unitary quantum mechanics, using a tripartite partition into system, observer, and environment degrees of freedom. This generalizes the second law of thermodynamics to “The system’s entropy cannot decrease unless it interacts with the observer, and it cannot increase unless it interacts with the environment.” The former follows from the quantum Bayes theorem we derive. We show that because of the long-range entanglement created by cosmological inflation, the cosmic entropy decreases exponentially rather than linearly with the number of bits of information observed, so that a given observer can reduce entropy by much more than the amount of information her brain can store. Indeed, we argue that as long as inflation has occurred in a non-negligible fraction of the volume, almost all sentient observers will find themselves in a post-inflationary low-entropy Hubble volume, and we humans have no reason to be surprised that we do so as well, which solves the so-called inflationary entropy problem. An arguably worse problem for unitary cosmology involves gamma-ray-burst constraints on the “big snap,” a fourth cosmic doomsday scenario alongside the “big crunch,” “big chill,” and “big rip,” where an increasingly granular nature of expanding space modifies our life-supporting laws of physics. Our tripartite framework also clarifies when the popular quantum gravity approximation Gμν8πGTμν is valid, and how problems with recent attempts to explain dark energy as gravitational backreaction from superhorizon scale fluctuations can be understood as a failure of this approximation.

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  • Received 27 August 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.85.123517

© 2012 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Max Tegmark

  • Department of Physics and MIT Kavli Institute, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

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Issue

Vol. 85, Iss. 12 — 15 June 2012

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