Relational Emergent Time Achieves a Unified Framework for Quantum Systems and Cosmological Expansion

The nature of time remains one of the most profound questions in physics, and new research challenges the idea of time as a fundamental aspect of the universe. Amir Hossein Ghasemi, an independent researcher, presents a framework where temporal structure emerges not as a pre-existing entity, but from the correlations within a static, universal state. This innovative approach constructs time locally within subsystems, each possessing its own internal clock, and successfully extends to encompass relativistic effects, gravitational redshift, and the expansion of the cosmos. The resulting theory accurately reproduces established phenomena like time dilation, while also predicting subtle deviations from standard evolution for highly entangled systems and suggesting that massless particles experience minimal internal time, opening exciting avenues for both theoretical exploration and potential experimental verification in areas ranging from precision measurement to cosmology.

The research establishes a unified framework for emergent time, valid across diverse physical regimes, by connecting cosmological expansion and quantum correlations. The theory reproduces classical time dilation and predicts deviations from standard evolution dependent on the strength of quantum entanglement. It also suggests that particles lacking internal structure, such as massless particles, experience minimal passage of time. These consequences open new avenues for investigating the foundations of temporal physics, ranging from multi-clock quantum systems to precision measurements and cosmological studies.

Relational Time Emerges From System Correlations

Scientists developed a relational framework to investigate time, proposing that it does not exist as a fundamental quantity but instead emerges from correlations within a globally stationary state. The study pioneers a method where each subsystem possesses an internal clock, and conditional states evolve according to these internal readings, effectively defining time relationally. This approach allows time to emerge without invoking an external, absolute time reference, instead grounding it in the correlations between a clock and the subsystem of interest. The research team modeled the universe as a composite of a clock and a physical subsystem, represented mathematically by a global entangled state.

To define local time, scientists projected this global state onto a specific clock reading, effectively isolating the subsystem’s conditional state. This projection procedure yields an effective Schrödinger equation governing the subsystem’s evolution with respect to the emergent parameter, t, demonstrating that time arises from internal correlations rather than existing as a pre-defined background. The total Hamiltonian of this composite system satisfies a stationarity condition, ensuring the global state remains timeless while local dynamics emerge relative to each subsystem’s clock. To illustrate this concept, the team considered a configuration with one global clock entangled with multiple local clock subsystems, labeled A, B, and C.

This setup demonstrates that differences in the entanglement structure between each local clock and the global clock lead to distinct relational time flows, producing quantum-induced time dilation effects between subsystems. Consequently, each observer associated with a distinct subsystem experiences a local, emergent time evolution governed by its own effective Hamiltonian, all while the global wave function remains timeless. This innovative approach provides a framework for understanding how time can emerge from correlations, offering new avenues for research in temporal physics, precision metrology, and cosmology.

Emergent Time Correlates with Universal Expansion Rate

Scientists demonstrate that time does not function as a fundamental, external parameter, but instead emerges from correlations within a globally stationary quantum state. The research establishes a framework where each subsystem possesses an internal clock, and its evolution is defined conditionally with respect to these internal readings. Experiments reveal that the emergent time of a subsystem entangled with a cosmic clock is directly modified by the scale factor of the universe, demonstrating that faster expansion leads to slower accumulation of emergent time. For exponential expansion with a constant Hubble parameter, the emergent time saturates, indicating an asymptotic approach to a “frozen-time” regime where local dynamics become suppressed.

The team measured that in curved spacetime, the emergent time coincides with the relativistic proper time, automatically incorporating gravitational time dilation. Specifically, the research shows that the emergent time of a subsystem moving with velocity v is related to coordinate time t through a transformation consistent with special relativity. In general relativistic scenarios, the emergent time is determined by the spacetime metric along the subsystem’s trajectory. Furthermore, the work demonstrates that the emergent time is sensitive to both quantum correlations and spacetime geometry, allowing a unified treatment of quantum dynamics and gravity.

The team found that the framework reproduces classical time dilation, predicting correlation-dependent deviations from standard evolution, and suggests that non-interacting or massless particles exhibit negligible internal time. This research establishes a conceptual framework where time is not absolute, but rather observer-dependent and system-dependent, arising through entanglement with a reference clock. The results confirm that the emergent clock behaves as a fully temporal parameter, aligning with standard relativistic behavior in both flat and curved spacetime.

Time Emerges From System Correlations

This work presents a novel framework where time does not exist as a fundamental quantity, but instead emerges from correlations between physical subsystems and a global clock. The researchers demonstrate that temporal structure arises from these relationships, effectively creating an internal clock within each subsystem and allowing for a unified description of time across diverse physical regimes, including those involving relativistic motion, gravitational effects, and cosmological expansion. The theory successfully reproduces established phenomena like classical time dilation, while also predicting deviations from standard evolution for highly entangled systems and suggesting that massless particles experience negligible internal time. This achievement offers a new perspective on the relationship between quantum mechanics and relativity, proposing that relativistic effects are inherent within the quantum state itself, rather than being imposed externally. The framework interprets the Schrödinger equation as an observer-dependent description of timeless, underlying quantum dynamics, recovering standard quantum evolution when the emergent time aligns with intrinsic clock variables.