Unitary death of Schr\"odinger's cat

TL;DR

This paper investigates how a slight parity violation in the Rabi model causes symmetric Schrödinger cat states to spontaneously and unitarily collapse, offering a potential experimental test of wave-function collapse mechanisms.

Contribution

It demonstrates that parity violation in the Rabi model leads to a spontaneous, unitary collapse of Schrödinger cat states, providing a new perspective on quantum measurement processes.

Findings

Symmetric Schrödinger cat states are generated by parity violation.

These states undergo spontaneous collapse in a unitary manner.

The effect is experimentally testable with current quantum systems.

Abstract

We analyze dynamics of the Rabi model describing interactions of a qubit with a single soft-mode oscillator. We show that the model with a slightly violated parity generates symmetric Schr{\"o}dinger cat states of the oscillator, which suddenly perish in a spontaneous unitary process similar to the measurement-induced wave-function collapse. The effect is sufficiently robust to be tested experimentally, e.g., with trapped ions, macroscopic mechanical oscillators or superconducting circuits.