Does particle decay cause wave function collapse: An experimental test

Abstract

We describe an experimental test of whether particle decay causes wave function collapse. The test uses interference between two well separated, but coherent, sources of vector mesons. The short-lived mesons decay before their wave functions can overlap, so any interference must involve identical final states. Unlike previous tests of nonlocality, the interference involves continuous variables, momentum and position. Interference can only occur if the wave function retains amplitudes for all possible decays. The interference can be studied through the transverse momentum spectrum of the reconstructed mesons.

Slightly revised version, to appear in Phys. Lett. A. 11 pgs., including 2 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Coherent rho^0 Production in Ultra-Peripheral Heavy Ion Collisions
• Coherent Vector Meson Photoproduction with Nuclear Breakup in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

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• Coherent ${\rho }^0$ photoproduction in bulk matter at high energies
• Vector meson photoproduction in UPCs with FoCal
• New opportunities at the photon energy frontier
• Probing Quantum Phenomena through Photoproduction in Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collisions