Collapse, Not Computation · source record · preprint

On the conjectured gravity-related collapse rate E_Δ/ħ of massive quantum superpositions

Lajos Diósi · 2022

AI-verified citationSRC-DISI-2022

identifier / locator: arxiv:2111.04604
url: https://arxiv.org/abs/2111.04604
verification note: text retrieved and shown to the drafter on 2026-09-11 (run 2026-09-11-draft-orch-or-115454); passages checked by the verify verb
reliability notes: Primary statement by a co-originator of the model tested at Gran Sasso; text read from the arXiv PDF (v2, 16 Feb 2022).
Reflective/review article, not a new derivation or experiment; the author's characterisation of Penrose's reasoning is his own reading.

Evidence drawn from this source

Qualifies· moderateORCH-E071

what the source states: The spatial superposition |x1〉 + |x2〉 collapses at rate 1/τ = E_Δ/ħ, where τ is the mean lifetime and E_Δ is the difference between gravitational self-energies before and after the collapse, "respectively, times an unspecified numeric constant".
what we infer: My inference: the edition's 'untested vague theory' framing can be made precise and less rhetorical. The missing object is not a number but a dynamics; and the regularization scale that the LISA Pathfinder and underground bounds constrain may be unavoidable rather than an artefact of the tested surrogate.
limitations: Reflective article by one of two originators; his reading of Penrose's route around the divergence is his own.
No new calculation or experiment.

Supports· moderateORCH-E051

what the source states: Diósi reports that the least-decoherence semiclassical construction he developed with Tilloy — continuous hidden measurement of the mass distribution, fed back as a classical Newton potential — "confirms the heuristic proposal and makes the constant unique", with the superposition decaying at exactly the conjectured rate "with the unique prefactor const. = 1 / 2".
what we infer: My inference: this narrows the sharpest form of the escape at ORCH-E019. At least one dynamical realization lands on Penrose's own rate, so 'the tested model was never Penrose's' becomes a claim about which dynamics, not about whether any dynamics reproduces the relation. Whether that particular dynamics is itself already excluded by the bounded channels is the open question.
limitations: Secondary description of Tilloy & Diósi, Phys. Rev. D 96, 104045, which was not retrieved in this pass.
Whether this construction predicts radiation or momentum diffusion at levels the Gran Sasso, Majorana and LISA Pathfinder bounds reach is not stated.

Supports· moderateORCH-E052

what the source states: Closing the article, Diósi writes that both agree the cat should collapse after a time of order ħ/E_Δ, but "We disagree on how this happens, smoothly, suddenly, or some other way", and names gravity-related collapse dynamics conserving energy and momentum as the hard remaining task.
what we infer: The rate conjecture and its dynamics are separable, and only the latter has been experimentally bounded so far — which is exactly why the physics rung is unresolved rather than refuted, and why 'less specified than the model that was tested' understates what is actually missing.
limitations: A statement of position, not a proof that no such dynamics exists.