English

Testing Dissipative Collapse Models with a Levitated Micromagnet

Quantum Physics 2020-11-18 v2

Abstract

We present experimental tests of dissipative extensions of spontaneous wave function collapse models based on a levitated micromagnet with ultralow dissipation. The spherical micromagnet, with radius R=27R=27 μ\mum, is levitated by Meissner effect in a lead trap at 4.24.2 K and its motion is detected by a SQUID. We perform accurate ringdown measurements on the vertical translational mode with frequency 5757 Hz, and infer the residual damping at vanishing pressure γ/2π<9\gamma/2\pi<9 μ\muHz. From this upper limit we derive improved bounds on the dissipative versions of the CSL (continuous spontaneous localization) and the DP (Di\'{o}si-Penrose) models with proper choices of the reference mass. In particular, dissipative models give rise to an intrinsic damping of an isolated system with the effect parameterized by a temperature constant; the dissipative CSL model with temperatures below 1 nK is ruled out, while the dissipative DP model is excluded for temperatures below 101310^{-13} K. Furthermore, we present the first bounds on dissipative effects in a more recent model, which relates the wave function collapse to fluctuations of a generalized complex-valued spacetime metric.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.06245,
  title  = {Testing Dissipative Collapse Models with a Levitated Micromagnet},
  author = {A. Vinante and G. Gasbarri and C. Timberlake and M. Toroš and H. Ulbricht},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.06245},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

10 pages, 7 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:51:17.938Z