Quantum statistics in Bohmian trajectory gravity

T C Andersen 2019 J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 1275 012038 – 9th International Workshop DICE2018 : Spacetime – Matter – Quantum Mechanics

Abstract. The recent experimental proposals by Bose et al. and Marletto et al. (BMV) outline a way to test for the quantum nature of gravity by measuring gravitationally induced differential phase accumulation over the superposed paths of two ∼ 10−14kg masses. These authors outline the expected outcome of these experiments for semi-classical, quantum gravity and collapse models. It is found that both semi-classical and collapse models predict a lack of entanglement in the experimental results. This work predicts the outcome of the BMV experiment in Bohmian trajectory gravity – where classical gravity is assumed to couple to the particle configuration in each Bohmian path, as opposed to semi-classical gravity where gravity couples to the expectation value of the wave function, or of quantized gravity, where the gravitational field is itself in a quantum superposition. In the case of the BMV experiment, Bohmian trajectory gravity predicts that there will be quantum entanglement. This is surprising as the gravitational field is treated classically. A discussion of how Bohmian trajectory gravity can induce quantum entanglement for a non superposed gravitational field is put forward.

This paper is a result of a talk I gave at DICE2018. The trip and the talk allowed me to sharpen the math and the arguments in this paper. I’m convinced that the results of a BMV like experiment would show these results – namely that gravity violates QM! Most physicists are of course on the opposite side of this and would assume that QM would win in a BMV experiment.

For those of the main camp, this paper is still important, as it describes another way to approximate quantum gravity – one that works better than the very often used Rosenfeld style semi-classical gravity. Sitting through talks where researchers use the semi-classical approximation in order to do sophisticated quantum gravity phenomenology has convinced me that often the results would change significantly if they had of used a Bohmian trajectory approach instead. The chemists figured this out a while ago – a Bohmian approximation is much more accurate than semi-classical approximations.

In some sense semi-classical gravity seems more complicated than Bohmian trajectory gravity, as in semi-classical gravity the gravitational field has to somehow integrate the entire position space of the wave function (a non local entity) in real time (via the Schr ̈odinger – Newton equation), in order to continuously use the expectation value as a source for the gravitational field. In Bohmian mechanics, the gravitational field connects directly to an existing ’hidden’ particle position, which is conceptually simpler.