Time and irreversibility in an accelerating universe

Gustavo E. Romero, Daniela Pérez.

Serie: Trabajo publicados del IAR ; no. 1107

Este artículo recibió la mención de honor en el Gravity Research Foundation Awards 2011.

Resumen: It is a remarkable fact that all processes occurring in the observable universe are irre versible, whereas the equations through which the fundamental laws of physics are formulated are invariant under time reversal. The emergence of irreversibility from the fundamental laws has been a topic of consideration by physicists, astronomers and philosophers since Boltzmann's formulation of his famous "H" theorem. In this paper we shall discuss some aspects of this problem and its connection with the dynamics of space-time, within the framework of modern cosmology. We conclude that the existence of cosmological horizons allows a coupling of the global state of the universe with the local events determined through electromagnetic processes.