4.4 Article

Reversible dynamics with closed time-like curves and freedom of choice

Journal

CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM GRAVITY
Volume 37, Issue 20, Pages -

Publisher

IOP PUBLISHING LTD
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6382/aba4bc

Keywords

closed time-like curves; causality; time

Funding

  1. University of Queensland
  2. Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award [DE170100712]
  3. Australian Research Council [DE170100712] Funding Source: Australian Research Council

Ask authors/readers for more resources

The theory of general relativity predicts the existence of closed time-like curves (CTCs), which theoretically would allow an observer to travel back in time and interact with their past self. This raises the question of whether this could create a grandfather paradox, in which the observer interacts in such a way to prevent their own time travel. Previous research has proposed a framework for deterministic, reversible, dynamics compatible with non-trivial time travel, where observers in distinct regions of spacetime can perform arbitrary local operations with no contradiction arising. However, only scenarios with up to three regions have been fully characterised, revealing only one type of process where the observers can verify to both be in the past and future of each other. Here we extend this characterisation to an arbitrary number of regions and find that there exist several inequivalent processes that can only arise due to non-trivial time travel. This supports the view that complex dynamics is possible in the presence of CTCs, compatible with free choice of local operations and free of inconsistencies.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.4
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available