Abstract
It has been argued that gravity acts dissipatively on quantum-mechanical systems, inducing thermal fluctuations that become indistinguishable from quantum fluctuations. This has led some authors to demand that some form of time irreversibility be incorporated into the formalism of quantum mechanics. As a tool toward this goal, we propose a thermodynamical approach to quantum mechanics, based on Onsagers classical theory of irreversible processes and Prigogines nonunitary transformation theory. An entropy operator replaces the Hamiltonian as the generator of evolution. The canonically conjugate variable corresponding to the entropy is a dimensionless evolution parameter.
Contrary to the Hamiltonian, the entropy operator is not a conserved Noether charge.
Our construction succeeds in implementing gravitationally-induced irreversibility in the
quantum theory.
