Related papers: Does gravity induce wavefunction collapse? An exam…
The Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (GRW) theory is a physical theory that, when combined with a suitable ontology, provides an explanation of quantum mechanics. The so-called collapse of the wave function is problematic in conventional quantum…
The classical Penrose inequality specifies a lower bound on the total mass in terms of the area of certain trapped surfaces. This fails at the semiclassical level. We conjecture a Quantum Penrose Inequality: the mass at spatial infinity is…
The assumption that wave function collapse is induced by correlating interactions of the kind that constitute measurements leads to a stochastic collapse equation that does not require the introduction of any new physical constants and that…
A picture of dynamical collapse of the wave function which is relativistic and time symmetric is presented. The part of the model which exhibits these features is the set of collapse outcomes. These play the role of matter distributed in…
Gravitation, according to General Relativity, is an attribute of space-time's geometry and hence not a force in the Newtonian sense. This is a consequence of Einstein's equivalence principle, which so far passed all experimental tests with…
A ubiquitous feature of quantum mechanical theories is the existence of states of superposition. This is expected to be no different for a quantum gravity theory. Guided by this consideration and others we consider a framework in which…
On one popular view, the general covariance of gravity implies that change is relational in a strong sense, such that all it is for a physical degree of freedom to change is for it to vary with regard to a second physical degree of freedom.…
The superposition principle is the cornerstone of quantum mechanics, leading to a variety of genuinely quantum effects. Whether the principle applies also to macroscopic systems or, instead, there is a progressive breakdown when moving to…
Starting from an idea of S.L. Adler~\cite{Adler2015}, we develop a novel model of gravity-induced spontaneous wave-function collapse. The collapse is driven by complex stochastic fluctuations of the spacetime metric. After deriving the…
One of the conceptual tensions between quantum mechanics (QM) and general relativity (GR) arises from the clash between the spatial nonseparability} of entangled states in QM, and the complete spatial separability of all physical systems in…
Some versions of quantum theory treat wave function collapse as a fundamental physical phenomenon to be described by explicit laws. One motivation is to find a consistent unification of quantum theory and gravity, in which collapse prevents…
Using the relativistic concept of time dilation we show that a superposition of gravitational potentials can lead to nonunitary time evolution. For sufficiently weak gravitational potentials one can still define, for all intents and…
The measurement problem in quantum mechanics is almost exclusively discussed in situations where gravity is ignored. We discuss some recent developments in our understanding of quantum gravity and argue that they significantly alter the…
We demonstrate that the Penrose inequality is valid for spherically symmetric geometries even when the horizon is immersed in matter. The matter field need not be at rest. The only restriction is that the source satisfies the weak energy…
It was generally believed that, in general relativity, the fundamental laws of nature should be invariant or covariant under a general coordinate transformation. In general relativity, the equivalence principle tells us the existence of a…
We discuss the implications of a wave function for quantum gravity, which involves nothing but 3-dimensional geometries as arguments and is invariant under general coordinate transformations. We derive an analytic wave function from the…
We propose, as an alternative theory of quantum mechanics, a relativistically covariant variational principle (VP) capable of describing both wavefunction collapse and, as an appropriate limiting case, evolution of the wavefunction…
A number of well-known difficulties in physics resulted from merging the theory of relativity with the Compton-de Broglie wave mechanics. Two such problems were the failure of Dirac's relativistic wave equation to predict the correct…
Collapse models are modifications of quantum theory where the wave function is treated as physically real and the collapse of the wave function is a physical process. This appears to introduce a time reversal asymmetry into the dynamics of…
A framework for wave function collapse models that is symmetric under time reversal is presented. Within this framework there are equivalent pictures of collapsing wave functions evolving in both time directions. The backwards-in-time Born…