Chameleonic Equivalence Postulate and Wave Function Collapse

摘要

A chameleonic solution to the cosmological constant problem and the nonequivalence of different conformal frames at the quantum level have been recently suggested[Phys. Rev. D82 (2010) 044006]. In this article we further discuss the theoretical grounds of thatmodel and we are led to a chameleonic equivalence postulate (CEP). Whenever a theory satisfiesour CEP (and some other additional conditions), a density-dependence of the mass of matterfields is naturally present. Let us summarize the main results of this paper. 1) The CEP canbe considered the microscopic counterpart of the Einstein’s Equivalence Principle and, hence, achameleonic description of quantum gravity is obtained: in our model, (quantum) gravitation isequivalent to a conformal anomaly. 2) To illustrate one of the possible applications of the CEP,we point out a connection between chameleon fields and quantum-mechanical wave functioncollapse. The collapse is induced by the chameleonic nature of the theory. We discuss thecollapse for a Stern-Gerlach experiment and for a diffraction experiment with electrons. Moreresearch efforts are necessary to verify whether these ideas are compatible with phenomenologicalconstraints.