The Dynamics of the Schrodinger-Newton System with Self-Field Coupling

TL;DR

This paper investigates a modified Schrödinger-Newton system with self-field coupling, revealing differences in collapse behavior and critical mass predictions compared to the traditional system, with implications for quantum gravity models.

Contribution

It introduces a self-coupled gravitational model within the Schrödinger framework and compares its dynamics and collapse predictions to the standard Schrödinger-Newton system.

Findings

Ground state energies match Dirac energies within 10%

Critical mass for collapse is approximately 3.3 Planck masses

Self-coupled case does not exhibit collapse or decay to ground state

Abstract

We probe the dynamics of a modified form of the Schrodinger-Newton system of gravity coupled to single particle quantum mechanics. At the masses of interest here, the ones associated with the onset of "collapse" (where the gravitational attraction is competitive with the quantum mechanical dissipation), we show that the Schrodinger ground state energies match the Dirac ones with an error of ~ 10%. At the Planck mass scale, we predict the critical mass at which a potential collapse could occur for the self-coupled gravitational case, m ~ 3.3 Planck mass, and show that gravitational attraction opposes Gaussian spreading at around this value, which is a factor of two higher than the one predicted (and verified) for the Schrodinger-Newton system. Unlike the Schrodinger-Newton dynamics, we do not find that the self-coupled case tends to decay towards its ground state; there is no collapse in this case.