Spontaneous collapse: a solution to the measurement problem and a source of the decay in mesonic systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how spontaneous collapse models, specifically QMUPL and CSL, can explain decay and flavor oscillations in neutral mesons, providing testable predictions and highlighting their sensitivity to underlying assumptions.

Contribution

It computes decay predictions for neutral mesons within collapse models, linking measurable parameters to collapse rates and emphasizing their potential to test quantum foundations.

Findings

Collapse models predict decay dynamics consistent with experimental data.

Neutral mesons are highly sensitive to modifications of quantum mechanics.

Results align with previous theoretical bounds on collapse rates.

Abstract

Dynamical reduction models propose a solution to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics: the collapse of the wave function becomes a physical process. We compute the predictions to decaying and Dynamical reduction models propose a solution to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics: the collapse of the wave function becomes a physical process. We compute the predictions to decaying and flavor--oscillating neutral mesons for the two most promising collapse models, the QMUPL (Quantum Mechanics with Universal Position Localization) model and the mass-proportional CSL (Continuous Spontaneous Localization) model. Our results are showing (i) a strong sensitivity to the very assumptions of the noise field underlying those two collapse models and (ii) under particular assumptions the CSL case allows even to recover the decay dynamics. This in turn allows to predict the effective collapse rates solely based on the measured values for the oscillation (mass differences) and the measured values of the decay constants. The four types of neutral mesons ($K$-meson, $D$-meson, $B_d$-meson, $B_s$-meson) lead surprisingly to ranges comparable to those put forward by Adler (2007) and Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (1986). Our results show that these systems at high energies are very sensitive to possible modifications of the standard quantum theory making them a very powerful laboratory to rule out certain collapse scenarios and studying the detailed physical processes solving the measurement problem.