ATL 3100A and Virtual Via Zoom: https://umd.zoom.us/j/5972416689
Description
Title: Steepest Entropy Ascent, No-Signaling, and Non-Abelian Thermal States Speaker: Rohit Ray (Virginia Tech) Date & Time: August 10, 2026, 2:30pm Where to Attend: ATL 3100A and Virtual Via Zoom: https://umd.zoom.us/j/5972416689
The steepest-entropy-ascent (SEA) framework provides a top-down, phenomenological approach to irreversible quantum dynamics: rather than deriving a master equation from a system environment model, it posits a variational principle—maximize entropy production rate at each instant, subject to conservation of all charges. The resulting nonlinear equation of motion is thermodynamically consistent by construction, enforcing Gibbs states as the unique stable equilibria for a single conserved charge. The nonlinearity, however, raises an immediate foundational concern: nonlinear quantum dynamics generically permits superluminal signaling between entangled subsystems. We resolve this for composite SEA dynamics by introducing local perception operators (LPOs)— maps from global observables to their locally accessible counterparts—and proving that LPOs of any function of the global state are invariant under local unitary operations on a remote subsystem. Since the SEA dissipator is built entirely from LPOs, no-signaling follows without invoking any property of the charge algebra: the proof is commutativity-agnostic. This charge-agnosticism opens a direct path to non-Abelian thermodynamics. We prove that for any set of conserved charges {Ck} with [Ck, H] = 0 but [Cj , Ck] unrestricted, the Non-Abelian Thermal State ρ∗ ∝ exp − P k µkCk is the unique fixed point of the SEA dissipative flow. Thereby formally introduce the non-commuting charges in the SEA landscape.
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