finite.works
Results · The thermodynamics of acting in time

The price of time order

Seth Douglas and Nidhal Mghirbi · version 1.0.2 · Zenodo, · doi:10.5281/zenodo.23323043 · PDF

In plain wordsFor every schedule of arrivals, releases and returns, one quantity, the entropy a device’s record must gain plus the energy it hands over, fixes its least work rate however slowly it runs, and which channels cost nothing can be decided only when outputs may wait.

The result

As the paper states it, in briefThe keystone of four companion papers: one law prices every schedule of arrivals, releases and returns.

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Novelty and credit

Novelty
Extends named prior work: for a single release the price extends Cope’s entanglement cost of steering assemblages, and the price of holding carriers is Wei’s generalized Hamming weights. New, in the paper’s words: the worth of one more step of delay, the NP-hard choice of carriers to hold, and the ladder of free processes.

Versionsthree, each with its own DOI

Every archived version, newest first. Dates are Zenodo publication dates. All versions: 10.5281/zenodo.23310622, which always resolves to the newest.
VersionDateDOINotes
1.0.210.5281/zenodo.23323043Correction: The four thermodynamics papers of 11 October cited Thompson et al. with a DOI that did not resolve. Version 1.0.2 of each paper gives the correct DOI, 10.1103/dryx-l5rt. PDF hosted here.
1.0.110.5281/zenodo.23310735
1.0.010.5281/zenodo.23310623

Paper, code and links

PDF

papers/time-order-v1.0.2.pdf, version 1.0.2, 702,538 bytes.

SHA-256 517f70c00bd5bda7412a181ef7716ef1d30806856d3e83417e516eb36c368cc5

Corrections

  1. The four thermodynamics papers of 11 October cited Thompson et al. with a DOI that did not resolve. Version 1.0.2 of each paper gives the correct DOI, 10.1103/dryx-l5rt.

All corrections, and what counts as one.

Cite

@misc{douglas2026timeorder,
  author  = {Douglas, Seth and Mghirbi, Nidhal},
  title   = {The price of time order},
  year    = {2026},
  version = {1.0.2},
  doi     = {10.5281/zenodo.23323043},
  url     = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23323043}
}

time-order.bibAll papers as BibTeX