Dissipative Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model

TL;DR

This paper introduces a dissipative version of the CSL collapse model that ensures finite energy during evolution, improving its physical realism and impact on experimental tests of quantum superpositions.

Contribution

It presents a novel dissipative CSL model with finite energy evolution, addressing a key limitation of previous collapse models.

Findings

The dissipative CSL model maintains finite energy during system evolution.

It introduces a non-linear stochastic modification of the Schrödinger equation.

This approach enhances the model's physical realism and experimental testability.

Abstract

Collapse models explain the absence of quantum superpositions at the macroscopic scale, while giving practically the same predictions as quantum mechanics for microscopic systems. The Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL) model is the most refined and studied among collapse models. A well-known problem of this model, and of similar ones, is the steady and unlimited increase of the energy induced by the collapse noise. Here we present the dissipative version of the CSL model, which guarantees a finite energy during the entire system's evolution, thus making a crucial step toward a realistic energy-conserving collapse model. This is achieved by introducing a non-linear stochastic modification of the Schr\"odinger equation, which represents the action of a dissipative finite-temperature collapse noise. The possibility to introduce dissipation within collapse models in a consistent way will have relevant impact on the experimental investigations of the CSL model, and therefore also on the testability of the quantum superposition principle.