English

Quantifying superluminal signalling in Schr\"odinger-Newton model

Quantum Physics 2025-12-23 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The Schr\"odinger-Newton equation aims at describing the dynamics of massive quantum systems subject to the gravitational self-interaction. As a deterministic nonlinear quantum wave equation, it is generally believed to conflict with the relativistic no-signalling principle. Here we challenge this viewpoint and show that it is of key importance to study the quantitative and operational character of the superluminal effects. To this end we employ a rigorous formalism of probability measures on spacetime and quantify the probability of a successful superluminal bit transfer via the single-particle Schr\"odinger-Newton equation. We demonstrate that such a quantity decreases with the increasing size and mass of the system. Furthermore, we prove that the Einstein-Dirac system, which yields the Schr\"odinger-Newton equation in the non-relativistic limit, is perfectly compatible with the relativistic causal structure. Our study demonstrates that the Schr\"odinger-Newton equation, which is by construction non-relativistic, is in fact `more compatible' with the no-signalling principle than the ordinary free Schr\"odinger equation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2512.19260,
  title  = {Quantifying superluminal signalling in Schr\"odinger-Newton model},
  author = {Julia Osęka-Lenart and Marcin Płodzień and Maciej Lewenstein and Michał Eckstein},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2512.19260},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

20 pages, 10 figures, comments are welcome

R2 v1 2026-07-01T08:36:40.531Z