2012/06/21 by D. Acosta, Acosta, D., Pedro Fernández de Córdoba +6 · 1 citation
Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Mathematical Physics (math-ph) #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #hep-th #math-ph #math.MP #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1206.4941
20 pages, refs. added
openalex publication_date 2012/06/21 · arxiv created 2012/08/20 · arxiv updated 2012/08/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present an explicit correspondence between quantum mechanics and the classical theory of irreversible thermodynamics as developed by Onsager, Prigogine et al. Our correspondence maps irreversible Gaussian Markov processes into the semiclassical approximation of quantum mechanics. Quantum-mechanical propagators are mapped into thermodynamical probability distributions. The Feynman path integral also arises naturally in this setup. The fact that quantum mechanics can be translated into thermodynamical language provides additional support for the conjecture that quantum mechanics is not a fundamental theory but rather an emergent phenomenon, i.e., an effective description of some underlying degrees of freedom.