New Limits on Spontaneous Wave Function Collapse Models with the XENONnT Data

TL;DR

This study uses XENONnT data to set new experimental limits on spontaneous wave function collapse models, challenging their viability and guiding future theoretical developments.

Contribution

It provides the first complete exclusion of certain CSL model parameters using XENONnT data, and improves limits on the Diósi-Penrose model by a factor of 5.7.

Findings

Excludes the simplest CSL model with white noise.

Improves Diósi-Penrose model limits by a factor of 5.7.

Suggests more complex models are needed to address quantum measurement.

Abstract

We have analyzed recently published XENONnT data for the spontaneous X-ray emission signature predicted by the objective wave function collapse model of quantum mechanics. With extremely low background and large exposure, XENONnT data can be used to completely exclude the theoretically predicted collapse parameters of continuous spontaneous localization~(CSL) model suggested by Ghirardi, Rhimini and Weber. Our result strongly suggests that the simplest version of the CSL model with the white-noise assumption is unlikely to provide answers to the long-standing measurement problem of quantum mechanics and motivates pursuits of more complex versions of the theory. If the result is interpreted with the Di\'{o}si-Penrose gravitational wave function collapse model, our limit improves the previous limit by a factor of 5.7. Detailed analysis using more precise background modelling can further improve the limits.