Thermodynamic origin of quantum time-energy uncertainty relation

Abstract

The problem of time is a notable obstacle towards the recognition of quantum theory as the ultimate fundamental description of nature. Quantum theory may not be complete if founded upon classical notions. Louis de Broglie, seeming to be more or less convinced about the ontology of his proposed matter waves, tried to develop a theory of sub-quantum degrees of freedom relying on statistical thermodynamics. He realized a quantum particle as a fluctuating dense corpuscle formed via non-linear effects from a sub-quantum medium. A wave on the medium guides the vibrating corpuscle. He argued that an intrinsic clock of a quantum particle is related to its Brownian motion at the sub-quantum level. This led him to conjecture a relation between the de Broglie clock frequency $m c^2/h$ and its implicit temperature, which equals that of the surrounding sub-quantum medium. About the same time, Mandelbrot was the first to derive in a classical setting a thermodynamic uncertainty relation between energy and temperature, that was, coincidentally or not, anticipated by Bohr and Heisenberg in the first years of development of quantum theory. We show here that, when the de Broglie temperature-time conjecture is assumed, the thermodynamic temperature-energy uncertainty relation leads to the quantum time-energy uncertainty relation.