VTN-9. Temporal Memory as an Irreversible Expansion of Event Space

This paper develops a formal concept of temporal memory within the framework of temporal dynamics of complex systems. Temporal memory is not treated as a storage of past states, records, or information traces, but as a structural effect of irreversible events that expand the space of admissible future transitions. Each realized event eliminates a subset of previously possible trajectories while simultaneously generating new admissible configurations that did not exist before the event. Within this approach, memory is identified with the persistent modification of the temporal state space ( T(t) ), rather than with material carriers or informational encoding. Irreversibility arises not from dissipation alone, but from the asymmetry between the disappearance and emergence of possible trajectories. Temporal memory thus represents the accumulation of newly available degrees of freedom, embedding past events into the structure of future evolution. The proposed framework distinguishes temporal memory from information and entropy, avoids direct reliance on Shannon-based formulations, and introduces memory as a fundamental property of temporal evolution. The universality of temporal memory is demonstrated across physical, biological, cognitive, and social systems. This model provides a unified explanation for irreversibility, persistence of structure, and the directional character of time in complex systems. This paper is an English-language archival version of a work originally published in Russian. The Zenodo version is intended for documentation, citation stability, and open access dissemination. The primary publication venue is a Russian academic journal.