Comments on the paper "Foundation of statistical mechanics from symmetries of entanglement" by S. Deffner and W. Zurek

TL;DR

This paper critiques a recent quantum approach to statistical mechanics, arguing it is not fundamentally different from traditional methods and is applicable beyond quantum systems.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the proposed quantum approach is not unique or conceptually distinct from standard statistical mechanics arguments.

Findings

The approach is not specific to quantum systems.

It aligns with traditional microcanonical and canonical ensemble arguments.

The approach lacks unique quantum features.

Abstract

The authors of the recent paper [1] boldly claim to discover a new fully quantum approach to foundation of statistical mechanics: "Our conceptually novel approach is free of mathematically ambiguous notions such as probability, ensemble, randomness, etc." The aim of this note is to show that this approach is neither specific for quantum systems nor really conceptually different from the standard textbook arguments supporting microcanonical or canonical ensembles in statistical mechanics.