Related papers: Does gravity induce wavefunction collapse? An exam…
One of the major issues confronting theoretical physics is finding a quantum theory of gravity and a resolution to the cosmological constant problem. It is believed that a true quantum theory of gravity will lead to a solution to the this…
Gravitational waves are excellent tools to probe the foundations of General Relativity in the strongly dynamical and non-linear regime. One such foundation is Lorentz symmetry, which can be broken in the gravitational sector by the…
For a given space-time and for an arbitrary time-like geodesic, we analyze the conditions for the construction of Fermi coordinates so that they are also rigid covariant. We then apply these conditions to linear plane gravitational waves.
A Lorentz invariant model for gravity-induced quantum state reduction is presented, which is mainly developed from Penrose's argument that the time translation operator in a superposition of macroscopic states is ill-defined. The problem to…
We investigate gravitational collapse in the context of quantum mechanics. We take primary interest in the behavior of the collapse near the horizon and near the origin (classical singularity) from the point of view of an infalling…
Investigation into the applicability of the equivalence principle in quantum mechanics has taken many forms, with varying conclusions. Here, a dynamical semi-classical description of a wave packet in terms of its center of mass and higher…
We explain the collapse of the wavefunction with the notion that, in a measurement, the system observed nucleates a first order phase transition in the measuring device. The possible final states differ by the values of macroscopic…
According to Schroedinger's ideas, classical dynamics of point particles should correspond to the " geometrical optics " limit of a linear wave equation, in the same way as ray optics is the limit of wave optics. It is shown that, using…
Recent developments in holographic gravity suggest that spacetime structure may be deeply related to quantum mechanics. In this work, from a different perspective, we demonstrate that wave-particle duality can be interpreted as the…
Based on quantum origin of the universe, in this article we find that the universal wave function can be far richer than the superposition of many classical worlds studied by Everett. By analyzing the more general universal wave function…
It is often assumed that the only effect of the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (`GRW') dynamical collapse mechanism on the `tails' of the wavefunction (that is, the components of superpositions on which the collapse is \emph{not} centred) is to…
One of the main technical obstacles in constructing a consistent theory of quantum gravity is that the metric itself defines the causal structure required for quantization. This motivates implementing quantum aspects of gravity through an…
We address a long-standing misperception on the gravitational ``arrow of time'', a proposal by Penrose (also known as the ``Weyl-curvature hypothesis") that associates structure formation along timelike directions in which Weyl-curvature…
Collapse models describe the breakdown of the quantum superposition principle when moving from microscopic to macroscopic scales. They are among the possible solutions to the quantum measurement problem and thus describe the emergence of…
A novel approach for measuring wavefunction collapse is proposed which, unlike interferometric measurements, is not affected by decoherence. A mirror of a Michelson interferometer is transferred into a quantum superposition, where the decay…
The fact that gravitational environments cannot be shielded (since gravity is universal) makes them of great theoretical interest to decoherence mechanisms and to the quantum-to-classical transition. While past results seemed to indicate…
Predecoherence, as its name indicates, is the same physical effect as decoherence, originating in the same interactions with an environment, injecting also incoherence and breaking unitarity. But whereas decoherence acts immediately after a…
I describe here some features of a non-geometrical approach to quantum gravity which leads to another picture of ties of gravitation and cosmology. The role of taking into account the effect of time dilation of the standard cosmological…
We discuss how a background bath of gravitons can induce decoherence of quantum systems. The mechanism is dephasing, the loss of phase coherence due to quantum geometry fluctuations caused by the gravitons. This effect is illustrated in a…
The Penrose method for constructing spherical impulsive gravitational waves is investigated in detail, including alternative spatial sections and an arbitrary cosmological constant. The resulting waves include those that are generated by a…