Models of Wave-function Collapse, Underlying Theories, and Experimental Tests

Understand

Quantum mechanics is an extremely successful theory that agrees with every experiment.

• However, the principle of linear superposition, a central tenet of the theory, apparently contradicts a commonplace observation: macroscopic objects are never found in a linear superposition of position states.
• Moreover, the theory does not really explain as to why during a quantum measurement, deterministic evolution is replaced by probabilistic evolution, whose random outcomes obey the Born probability rule.
• In this article we review an experimentally falsifiable phenomenological proposal, known as Continuous Spontaneous Collapse: a stochastic non-linear modification of the Schr\"{o}dinger equation, which resolves these problems, while giving the same experimental results as quantum theory in the microscopic regime.