Umberto Lucia (Politecnico di Torino)

Atoms continuously interact with the photons of the electromagnetic fields in their environment. This electromagnetic interaction is the consequence of the thermal non-equilibrium. It introduces an element of randomness to atomic and molecular motion, which brings to the decreasing of path information required for microscopic reversibility of evolution. In any atomic electron-photon interaction an energy footprint is given to the atom, and the emitted photon looses energy. The emission of radiation isn’t time reversible and this causes the information-destroying in photon-electron interaction which generates the irreversibility in macroscopic systems. Full text