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Sneaking a Look at Ghirardi’s Cards: Collapse Models Mapped with the Spontaneous Radiation

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Do Wave Functions Jump?

Part of the book series: Fundamental Theories of Physics ((FTPH,volume 198))

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Abstract

The collapse models were proposed more than 30 years ago to save the poor Schrödinger’s cat from its zombie-fate. In these models the standard Schrödinger equation is modified with the introduction of non-linear and stochastic terms, naturally collapsing the wave function in space. Ghirardi was pioneering these models, which predict deviations from the standard Quantum Mechanics. One of these predictions is the emission of a “spontaneous radiation”, which we explored to set the most stringent limits on the collapse models parameters in a broad range. This allowed us paraphrasing the title of his famous book, to sneak a look at Ghirardi’s cards.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support of the Centro Fermi—Museo Storico della Fisica e Centro Studi e Ricerche “Enrico Fermi” (Open Problems in Quantum Mechanics project), EU COST Action CA 15220 and EU FET project TEQ (grant agreement 766900). Furthermore, these studies were made possible by the support of the Foundational Questions Institute, FOXi.

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Correspondence to K. Piscicchia .

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Piscicchia, K., Del Grande, R., Laubenstein, M., Curceanu, C. (2021). Sneaking a Look at Ghirardi’s Cards: Collapse Models Mapped with the Spontaneous Radiation. In: Allori, V., Bassi, A., Dürr, D., Zanghi, N. (eds) Do Wave Functions Jump? . Fundamental Theories of Physics, vol 198. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46777-7_28

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