Quantum state reduction of general initial states through spontaneous unitarity violation

Abstract

The inability of Schrodinger's unitary time evolution to describe measurement of a quantum state remains a central foundational problem. It was recently suggested that the unitarity of Schrodinger dynamics can be spontaneously broken, resulting in measurement as an emergent phenomenon in the thermodynamic limit. Here, we introduce a family of models for spontaneous unitarity violation that apply to generic initial superpositions over arbitrarily many states, using either single or multiple state-independent stochastic components. Crucially, we show that Born's probability rule emerges spontaneously in all cases.