A Measurement-Like Test of Continuous Spontaneous Localization with a Reversible Nanoparticle Pointer

Abstract

We propose a measurement-like interferometric test of Continuous Spontaneous Localization (CSL), in which a trapped nanoparticle acts as a reversible mesoscopic pointer rather than as the initially prepared microscopic superposition. A microscopic two-branch system applies opposite weak forces to the nanoparticle, temporarily amplifying which-branch information into branch-conditioned pointer displacements. After one weak-trap period the pointer positions and momenta recombine, so ordinary quantum mechanics predicts recovery of the microscopic coherence, whereas CSL predicts an irreversible visibility loss accumulated while the pointer mass distributions were separated. For a $10^{-18},{\rm kg}$ nanoparticle driven by a $10^{-21},{\rm N}$ differential force at $T=0.4,{\rm K}$, including thermal breathing and an ordinary loss budget $Λ_{\rm loss}\lesssim 0.1$, we find $λ_{\min}\simeq 1.4\times 10^{-10},{\rm s}^{-1}$ at $r_c=100,{\rm nm}$ with $10^5$ shots. A more aggressive lower-frequency point reaches $λ_{\min}\simeq 8.7\times 10^{-12},{\rm s}^{-1}$. These sensitivities would improve over digitized direct matter-wave CSL bounds by about $7\times 10^3$ and $10^5$, respectively, while remaining above the strongest non-interferometric bounds. The proposal is therefore aimed at a substantially stronger direct visibility-loss test of CSL, and at a reversible measurement-like realization of collapse sensitivity, rather than at the strongest overall exclusion curve.