Analogue gravity simulation of superpositions of spacetimes

Abstract

Taking the principles of quantum mechanics as they stand and applying them to gravity, leads to the conclusion that one might be able to generate superpositions of spacetimes, at least formally. We analyze such a possibility from an analogue gravity perspective. We present an analogue toy model consisting of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential and identify the states that could potentially be interpreted as superposition of effective spacetimes. These states are unstable and the source of instability from a microscopic point of view can be related to the absence of a well-defined causal structure in the effective geometric description. We explore the consequences of these instabilities and argue that they resonate with Penrose's ideas about the decay that superpositions of states with sufficiently different gravitational fields associated should experience.

13 pages, 2 figures, shortened version that matches the published one

References in corpus (4)

• Fragmentation of Bose-Einstein Condensates
• Underground test of gravity-related wave function collapse
• Chronology Protection Implementation in Analogue Gravity
• How the quantum emerges from gravity

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Quantum signatures of black hole mass superpositions
• Quantum superpositions of Minkowski spacetime
• Entanglement harvesting in quantum superposed spacetime
• Hawking radiation from an analogue bouncing geometry
• The sounds of science a symphony for many instruments and voices part II
• Analogue simulation of quantum gravity black hole models in a dc-SQUID array
• Space-time superpositions as fluctuating geometries