Spherically-symmetric solutions of the Schrödinger-Newton equations. (English) Zbl 0936.83037

Moroz, Irene M.; Penrose, Roger; Tod, Paul

Classical Quantum Gravity 15, No. 9, 2733-2742 (1998).

The goal of the authors is to understand the quantum state reduction as a gravitational phenomenon in the framework of the Newtonian gravitation. For this they consider the Schrödinger-Newton equations. This is a coupled system consisting of the Schrödinger equation for a particle moving in its own gravitational field, where this is generated by its own probability density via the Poisson equation. Using both numerical and analytic investigations, the authors find a discrete family of spherically-symmetric solutions of these equations, everywhere regular, and with normalizable wavefunctions. The solutions are labelled by the non-negative integers, the \(n\)th solution having \(n\) zeros in the wavefunction. These solutions are the only globally defined spherically-symmetric solutions.

Reviewer: D.V.Alekseevsky (Moskva)

MSC:

83C99	General relativity
81T20	Quantum field theory on curved space or space-time backgrounds
83E05	Geometrodynamics and the holographic principle

Keywords:

Schrödinger-Newton equations; Newton gravity; quantum state reduction