GAP Measures and Wave Function Collapse
Abstract
GAP measures (also known as Scrooge measures) are a natural class of probability distributions on the unit sphere of a Hilbert space that come up in quantum statistical mechanics; for each density matrix there is a unique measure GAP. We describe and prove a property of these measures that was not recognized so far: If a wave function is GAP distributed and a collapse occurs, then the collapsed wave function is again GAP distributed (relative to the appropriate ). This fact applies to collapses due to a quantum measurement carried out by an observer, as well as to spontaneous collapse theories such as CSL or GRW. More precisely, it is the conditional distribution of , given the measurement outcome (respectively, the noise in CSL or the collapse history in GRW), that is GAP.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2602.19993,
title = {GAP Measures and Wave Function Collapse},
author = {Roderich Tumulka},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.19993},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
9 pages LaTeX, no figures