Two Experimental Tests to Distinguish Decoherence from the Slicing Theory of Measurement

TL;DR

This paper proposes two experiments to empirically distinguish between the slicing theory of quantum measurement, which predicts revival of interference effects without back reaction, and decoherence, which predicts the opposite, using optical trap systems.

Contribution

It introduces experimental tests to differentiate the slicing theory from decoherence, focusing on their contrasting predictions about back reaction and phase revival.

Findings

Slicing theory predicts interference revival without back reaction.

Decoherence predicts back reaction with no interference revival.

Experiments in optical traps can distinguish these theories.

Abstract

Here we propose a pair of experiments to distinguish the recently proposed "slicing theory" of quantum measurement, which gives a transient many worlds picture, and decoherence. Since these two theories are essentially "opposites" in their approach and both claim to arise from the many body Schr\"odinger equation itself, there is no chance of them being equivalent representations of the same reality. It will be explicitly shown that each theory gives very different answers to the questions of back reaction and revival of phase effects after measurement. We suggest that the kinds of isolated systems now possible in optical traps is now sufficient to generate a selective distinction between these two theories. In particular we show that the slicing theory gives examples of interference from "revival of histories" in controlled examples but no back reaction on the measurement devices whereas decoherence gives the opposite.