The connection between `emergence of time from quantum gravity' and `dynamical collapse of the wave-function in quantum mechanics'

TL;DR

This paper explores how classical time emerges from quantum gravity and its connection to wave-function collapse, suggesting that time is a thermodynamic approximation of an underlying operator time, with implications for macroscopic superposition experiments.

Contribution

It proposes a link between emergent classical time in quantum gravity and wave-function collapse, extending Trace Dynamics ideas to a gravitational context.

Findings

Classical time is a thermodynamic approximation of operator time in quantum gravity.

The approach predicts observable effects in macroscopic superposition experiments.

Supports the view that quantum theory and classical mechanics emerge from a deeper underlying dynamics.

Abstract

There are various reasons to believe that quantum theory could be an emergent phenomenon. Trace Dynamics is an underlying classical dynamics of non-commuting matrices, from which quantum theory and classical mechanics have been shown to emerge, in the thermodynamic approximation. However, the time that is used to describe evolution in quantum theory is an external classical time, and is in turn expected to be an emergent feature - a relic of an underlying theory of quantum gravity. In this essay we borrow ideas from Trace Dynamics to show that classical time is a thermodynamic approximation to an operator time in quantum gravitational physics. This prediction will be put to test by ongoing laboratory experiments attempting to construct superposed states of macroscopic objects.