Quantifying superluminal signalling in Schr\"odinger-Newton model

TL;DR

This paper investigates the superluminal signaling potential of the Schr"odinger-Newton equation, showing that superluminal effects diminish with system size and that the related Einstein-Dirac system aligns with relativistic causality.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous quantification of superluminal signaling in the Schr"odinger-Newton model and demonstrates its compatibility with relativistic causality.

Findings

Superluminal signaling probability decreases with system size and mass.

The Einstein-Dirac system is compatible with relativistic causality.

Schr"odinger-Newton equation is more compatible with no-signalling than free Schr"odinger equation.

Abstract

The Schr\"odinger-Newton equation aims at describing the dynamics of massive quantum systems subject to the gravitational self-interaction. As a deterministic nonlinear quantum wave equation, it is generally believed to conflict with the relativistic no-signalling principle. Here we challenge this viewpoint and show that it is of key importance to study the quantitative and operational character of the superluminal effects. To this end we employ a rigorous formalism of probability measures on spacetime and quantify the probability of a successful superluminal bit transfer via the single-particle Schr\"odinger-Newton equation. We demonstrate that such a quantity decreases with the increasing size and mass of the system. Furthermore, we prove that the Einstein-Dirac system, which yields the Schr\"odinger-Newton equation in the non-relativistic limit, is perfectly compatible with the relativistic causal structure. Our study demonstrates that the Schr\"odinger-Newton equation, which is by construction non-relativistic, is in fact `more compatible' with the no-signalling principle than the ordinary free Schr\"odinger equation.