Editing Openai/6897769e-4ee4-800f-aba5-69cca34f701c (section)

==== You noted: if we could reach absolute zero, EM field lines would “lock together” and the process stops. In QAT language: ====
* Time and the arrow of time are the result of continuous photon ↔ electron events on shells (absorption then emission).
* If there are no photon events (i.e., all microscopic transitions are frozen), then surface currents vanish (jsurfμ→0j^\mu_{\rm surf}\to 0jsurfμ→0), Poynting flux into shells vanishes, and the dynamic transfers of energy stop. The ensemble average dynamics freeze; macroscopically nothing evolves: “local time stops” in the QAT sense.
* This maps neatly to the third law of thermodynamics: absolute zero cannot be reached; you can make the event rate arbitrarily small but not identically zero. So QAT is compatible with third law — the continuum process becomes arbitrarily slow but not perfectly halted.

Mathematically: set n^⋅Jbulk=0\hat n\cdot \mathbf{J}_{\rm bulk}=0n^⋅Jbulk=0 and j∥=0\mathbf{j}_\parallel=0j∥=0 — then continuity gives ∂tσ=0\partial_t\sigma=0∂tσ=0; Maxwell solutions become static. This is exactly the “fields lock” picture.