Time: a footprint of irreversibility

Abstract

In the environment there exists a continuous interaction between electromagnetic radiation and matter. So, atoms continuously interact with the photons of the environmental electromagnetic fields. This electromagnetic interaction is a consequence of thermal non-equilibrium. It introduces an element of randomness into atomic and molecular motion, which leads to the decrease of the path probability required for the microscopic reversibility of evolution. Recently, an energy footprint has been theoretically proven in the atomic electron-photon interaction, as well as the well known spectroscopic phase shift effect and the results on the irreversibility of the electromagnetic interaction with atoms and molecules, experimentally obtained by R. O. Doyle in 1968. Here, we want to show that such a quantum footprint is nothing more than the generation of time .