2005/11/30 by Sandu Popescu, Anthony J. Short, Andreas Winter · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.stat-mech #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nphys444
published as Nature Physics 2(11):754-758, 2006 · 12 pages, v3 title changed, v2 minor changes
arxiv created 2006/10/17 · arxiv updated 2017/08/02
We consider an alternative approach to the foundations of statistical mechanics, in which subjective randomness, ensemble-averaging or time-averaging are not required. Instead, the universe (i.e. the system together with a sufficiently large environment) is in a quantum pure state subject to a global constraint, and thermalisation results from entanglement between system and environment. We formulate and prove a "General Canonical Principle", which states that the system will be thermalised for almost all pure states of the universe, and provide rigorous quantitative bounds using Levy's Lemma.