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Quantum gravity and the collapse of the wavefunction

1989; Elsevier BV; Volume: 221; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/0370-2693(89)91482-2

1873-2445

John Ellis, Subhendra Mohanty, Dimitri V. Nanopoulos,

Black Holes and Theoretical Physics

We derive a general form of non-unitary modification to the hamiltonian evolution equation caused by wormholes interacting with a microscopic system. We show that it suppresses elements of the density matrix which are off-diagonal in the configuration space representation, thus causing the wavefunction to collapse. An order-of-magnitude estimate indicates that the collapse time is very long (t≈1037s) for a single elementary particle. However, the effect is enhanced for the centre-of-mass motion of a large aggregate of particles. In particular, the wavefunction of a body containing Avogadro's number of particles may be localized within a Bohr radius in t≈10−7s.