Spontaneous wave function collapse can suppress acoustic Schrodinger cat states

Schrödinger's famous thought experiment in which a cat hidden in a box can be both dead and alive at the same time demonstrates the concept of superposition on the macroscopic scale. However, the existence of such "cat states" (or simply "Cats") would be problematic in reality, as cat states not only go against common sense, but also pose problems for understanding gravity and spacetime.

"Different people emphasize different concerns about Cats," Lajos Diósi, a physicist the Wigner Research Center for Physics in Budapest, Hungary, told Phys.org. "Some people emphasize different ones at different times. So, allow me to pick up two arguments. Penrose (in my words): A Cat implies superposition of macroscopically different space-times, making physical time elusive. Myself: If we measure a Cat state a la von Neumann (why not?), then the collapse will macroscopically violate many conservation laws."

To address such problems, Diósi has expanded upon a model in which gravity-related spontaneous wave function collapses can suppress Schrödinger cat states, forcing them to take on only one value. Diósi's paper on suppressing cat states is published in a recent issue of the New Journal of Physics.