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# The extinction law in high redshift galaxies1footnote 11footnote 1 Based on observations made with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc. under NASA contract NAS 5-26555.

## 1 Introduction

Precise measurements of extinction curves are almost exclusively limited to the Galaxy, the LMC and the SMC, because at greater distances it becomes impossible to obtain the photometry or spectroscopy of individual stars needed for accurate extinction law measurements. Galactic extinction curves are well fitted by parameterized models with $`R_V3.1`$ ($`A_\lambda R_\lambda E(BV)`$), e.g. Savage & Mathis 1979, Fitzpatrick & Massa 1988, Cardelli, Clayton & Mathis 1989, hereafter CCM), although lines of sight with dense molecular gas can show much higher values (e.g. Jenniskens & Greenberg 1993) for a total range of $`2.1<R_V<5.8`$ (see e.g. Draine 2003 and references therein). In the Galaxy and most of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), the changes in the extinction law are strongly correlated with changes in the width and amplitude of the 2175Å feature in the extinction curve. The extinction curve of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) and some regions of the LMC is very different from the typical Galactic extinction law in having a far weaker or nonexistent 2175Å feature (e.g. Misselt et al. 1999, Gordon  et al. 2003). Physically, the extinction law depends on the mean size and composition of the dust grains along the line of sight (e.g. Clayton  et al. 2003, Draine & Malhotra 1993, Rouleau et al. 1997), so it should not be surprising that it varies with the environment.

There are only fragmentary data on the extinction curves in other local galaxies. A range of $`R_V`$ are found in M31, and the variations may be correlated with the local metallicity (Hodge & Kennicutt 1982, Iye & Richter 1985). There is evidence that the extinction curves of early-type galaxies are steeper functions of $`\lambda ^1`$, but there are no cleanly measured extinction curves (Warren-Smith & Berry 1983, Brosch & Loinger 1991, Goudfrooij et al. 1994). At least in the optical (I-band through B-band), Riess et al. (1996) used Type Ia supernovae to show that the extinction curves of nearby galaxies were consistent with a mean optical extinction curve having $`R_V=2.6\pm 0.3`$. In short, aside from one spiral galaxy and two irregulars (the Galaxy, the LMC and the SMC) we have few quantitative measurements of dust properties.

The galaxies, that have been studied so far, are not a representative sample of galaxies or environments. Moreover, all the physics governing dust properties (metallicity, star formation and evolution rates, radiation backgrounds) evolve strongly with redshift, so we would expect the properties of the dust to evolve with redshift. Evolution in the mean extinction law with redshift would be a crucial systematic uncertainty in studies of Type Ia supernovae to constrain the cosmological model (see, e.g., Perlmutter et al. 1999), since extinction modifies the apparent stretch of the light curves (Nugent et al. 2002) . Extinction laws are also required for models of galaxy evolution (e.g., in semi-analytic models, Silva et al. 2001, or population synthesis models, Gordon et al. 1997), for estimates of star formation rates in individual galaxies (e.g. Pettini et al. 1998; Meurer et al. 1999) or to construct a global history of star formation (e.g. Madau et al. 1998; Steidel et al. 1999). Extinction also affects the light curves of $`\gamma `$-ray bursts (e.g. Price et al. 2001, Jha et al. 2001), and deriving the extinction law from afterglows requires theoretical assumptions about the intrinsic spectrum of the burst. With the increasing need for extinction corrections at higher redshifts, it would be wise to obtain more quantitative measurements of dust properties at similar redshifts. To make any progress, we need a probe of extinction which has the precision of local stellar measurements and works at $`z=1`$ just as well as at $`z=0`$.

Gravitational lenses provide a unique tool to study the extinction properties of high redshift galaxies. In most of the $`80`$ known lens galaxies we see 2 or 4 images of a background AGN produced by the deflection of light by a foreground lens galaxy. When each image’s light traverses the lens galaxy, it is extinguished by the dust at that position. When the dust is not uniform, the amount of extinction is different for each image, whose observational signature is that the flux ratios of the images depend on wavelength (Nadeau  et al. 1991). Extinction curves have been estimated for several systems using optical and infrared flux ratios (Nadeau  et al. 1991, Jaunsen & Hjorth 1997, Motta  et al. 2002, Wucknitz  et al. 2003), and Falco  et al. (1999) made a general survey of dust properties using the available lens photometry. Unfortunately, ground-based observations can study the region around the 2175Å feature only for the highest redshift lenses. The feature is redshifted to wavelengths above the atmospheric cutoff (3500 Å) for $`z_l>0.6`$, and is easily studied only for $`z_l1`$. Most photometry from Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations is limited to the V, I and H-bands, since the observations were designed to study the lens and host galaxies rather than extinction. In this paper we used near-UV observations with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to study the extinction law of two gravitational lenses near the 2175Å feature. We summarize the observations in §2 and the results in §3.

## 2 Observations

From the Falco  et al. (1999) lens extinction survey, we selected 3 lenses with significant extinction whose redshifted 2175 Å feature would lie at longer wavelengths than the Lyman limit of the source quasar (i.e. $`2175(1+z_l)`$ Å$`>912(1+z_s)`$ Å). We used a total of 10 orbits to observe B 0218+357 (6 orbits), LBQS 1009–0252 (2 orbits) and Q 2337+0305 (2 orbits).

Table 1 shows a log of our WFPC2 observations. Each image was composed of dithered but not CR-split sub-exposures. The original observing request was reduced, and our subsequent decision to obtain data for all the proposed targets forced us to use only 2 sub-exposures for most of the observations. Unfortunately, for Q 2237+0305, we found the short integrations insufficient to produce a useful extinction measurement and we include only the photometric results for this system. The sub-exposures were combined using standard methods (e.g. as in Lehár  et al. 2000) but with additional manual masking to control the cosmic rays. Table 2 presents the magnitude measurements for all three systems.

## 3 Analysis and Discussion

If $`m_0(\lambda )`$ is the intrinsic QSO spectrum expressed as magnitudes at observed wavelength $`\lambda `$, then the spectrum of lensed image $`i`$, $`m_i(\lambda )`$, is

$$m_i(\lambda )=m_0(\lambda )M_i+E_iR\left(\frac{\lambda }{1+z_l}\right)$$
(1)
where $`M_i`$ and $`E_i=E(BV)`$ are the magnification and extinction of image $`i`$, and $`R(\lambda /(1+z_l))`$ is the extinction curve redshifted to the lens redshift $`z_l`$. By measuring the magnitude differences as a function of wavelength for each image pair (e.g., A and B)

$$m_B(\lambda )m_A(\lambda )=\mathrm{\Delta }M+\mathrm{\Delta }ER\left(\frac{\lambda }{1+z_l}\right)$$
(2)
we can measure the relative magnifications $`\mathrm{\Delta }M=M_BM_A`$, extinction differences $`\mathrm{\Delta }E(BV)=E_B(BV)E_A(BV)`$, and the mean extinction curve R(V) without needing to know the intrinsic spectrum $`m_0(\lambda )`$. We assume that the shape of the source spectrum does not vary with time, that there is no wavelength dependence $`M_i(\lambda )`$ to the magnification due to microlensing, and that extinction curve is the same for all images. We will discuss these assumptions further below.

We used a standard $`\chi ^2`$ statistic to fit the model to the measurements and to determine $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$, $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$, $`R_V`$ and their uncertainties. We used either the Cardelli  et al. (1989) parameterized models for the Galactic extinction curve or the Fitzpatrick & Massa (1990) model with its parameters set to the values found by Gordon  et al. (2003) for the average extinction in the SMC. The Galactic models have a strong 2175Å feature while the SMC models do not. We also attempted to determine the dust redshift $`z_d`$ by varying the lens redshift $`z_l`$ in our fits (Jean & Surdej 1998, Falco  et al. 1999). If the wavelength dependence of the flux ratios is due to extinction, then we should find that $`z_d`$ is consistent with $`z_l`$. Table 3 shows the results for these parameters.

From the colors of the lens galaxy in LBQS 1009-0252 or its location on the fundamental plane, we estimated that the lens redshift is $`z_l=z_{FP}=0.88_{0.11}^{+0.04}`$ (Kochanek  et al. 2000). To date, these estimated redshifts have always been confirmed by subsequent spectroscopic measurements. An example at similar redshift and with similar photometric data is HE1104–1805, where the Lidman et al. (2000) spectroscopic redshift of $`z_l=0.73`$ exactly matched the prior prediction of $`z_{FP}=0.73\pm 0.04`$ from the fundamental plane. Fig. 1 shows the magnitude differences as a function of the observed wavelength, and there is no sign of a 2175Å feature at the $`z_{FP}=0.88`$ redshifted wavelength of $`\lambda ^12.45\mu `$m-1. For $`z_l=z_{FP}`$ the best fit with a Galactic extinction curve has $`\chi ^2=32.7`$. In these fits we included the H-band flux ratio from Lehár  et al. (2000), although the result changes little if it is excluded. Galactic dust is permitted if the redshift estimate is wrong, as we find a perfect fit ($`\chi ^2=0.14`$) with a Galactic extinction law for $`z_d=0.31\pm 0.09`$. With this low redshift, the 2175Å feature lies outside the range of our data (see Fig. 1). This is very unlikely given the colors and structural properties of the lens galaxy because it is almost impossible for a lower redshift galaxy to mimic the colors and structure of a higher redshift early-type galaxy (see Lehár  et al. 2000 and Kochanek  et al. 2000).

The data are, however, very well fitted ($`\chi ^2=0.65`$) by an SMC extinction curve redshifted to the expected $`z_l=z_{FP}=0.88`$ (see Fig. 1). The SMC extinction curves lack the features needed to estimate a dust redshift, and we can find a good fit for almost any lens redshift ($`0z_d2`$ at 2$`\sigma `$). Chromatic microlensing can also produce wavelength-dependent flux ratios (see e.g. Yonehara  et al. 1999), but the lack of significant changes in the V and I flux ratios between 1999.01 and 1999.11 argues against a significant contribution from microlensing. In order to obtain such a rapid change in the flux ratio with wavelength using microlensing, the source would have to lie in a highly magnified region of the microlensing magnification pattern where the time scales would be relatively short. This is easily checked by comparing the emission line and continuum flux ratios in a spectrum, since extinction has the same effect on both spectral components while microlensing primarily affects the continuum fluxes (e.g. Wucknitz  et al. 2003).

The second lens, B 0218+357, has a known spectroscopic redshift of $`z_l=0.6847`$ (Browne  et al. 1993, Stickel & Kuhr 1993). We combined the 6 WFPC2 flux ratios with the radio flux ratio of $`m_Bm_A=1.40\pm 0.03`$ (Biggs  et al. 1999). The radio flux ratio provides a direct constraint on the true magnification ratio $`\mathrm{\Delta }M`$ because it is unaffected by extinction. The magnitude differences (see Fig. 2) show a feature at the redshifted wavelength of the 2175Å feature, but the overall pattern does not correspond to a standard $`R_V=3.1`$ Galactic extinction curve. The data are well fitted by the Cardelli et al. (1989) model ($`\chi ^2=0.72`$) for $`R_V=12\pm 2`$. This is an extrapolation well past the upper values of $`R_V5`$ actually observed in the Galaxy (see e.g. Clayton  et al. 2003 and references therein), but it maintains the overall structure of the high $`R_V`$ extinction curves observed in the Galaxy. In this case, the dust redshift of $`z_d=0.70\pm 0.06`$ is consistent with the spectroscopic redshift. Moreover, for B 0218+357 we did not include the Lehár  et al. (2000) photometry, yet the model passes almost exactly through the H-band point lying between the radio and optical data. This is consistent with local observations that the near-IR extinction curve is universal (e.g. Martin & Whittet 1990).

B 0218+357 is known to lie behind a molecular cloud from the existence of molecular absorption lines in the radio continuum (see e.g. Combes & Wiklind 1998). Given $`A_V4`$ mag, an atomic Hydrogen column density of $`N(H_I)10^{21}`$ cm-2 (Carilli, Rupen & Yanny 1993) and molecular Hydrogen column density of between $`N(H_2)2\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 ( Wiklind & Combes 1995; Gerin et al. 1997) and $`5\times 10^{23}`$ cm-2 (Wiklind & Combes 1995; Combes & Wiklind 1997; see also Menten & Reid 1996), we find a gas to dust ratio of $`N_H/A_V(125)\times 10^{22}`$ cm-2 mag-1. The uncertainties are driven by the large range of the molecular column density measurements. Gas-to-dust ratios in the Galaxy have an average value of $`N_H/A_V1.87\times 10^{21}`$ cm-2 mag-1 (for $`R_V=3.1`$, Bohlin  et al. 1978) with a remarkable small scatter $`30\%`$. At higher $`R_V`$ the value of $`N_H/A_V`$ appears to be greater than the average, but the highest value measured, corresponding to $`\rho `$ Ophiuchus ($`R_V=4.2`$), is only twice the average (see e.g. Kim & Martin 1996). Further study will be needed to understand a potential relation between the extreme value of $`R_V12`$ with the huge measured $`N_H/A_V`$ ratio for B 0218+357.

We explored whether adding dust with a different extinction law in front of the bluer image, B 0218+357B, would allow solutions with less extreme extinction curves. These models are under constrained, so we computed models for fixed ratios of the extinction between the two images ($`E_B(BV)=0.25E_A(BV)`$, $`0.50E_A(BV)`$ and $`0.75E_A(BV)`$). The results for a particular test, using a standard Galactic $`R_V=3.1`$ extinction law for the B image, are shown in Fig. 3. As we increase the extinction for image B, we find fits with lower values of $`R_V`$ for image A. This behavior is generic over a wide range of choices ($`2<R_V^B<5`$) for the B image extinction curve. In the final analysis, however, this approach does not seem to be a plausible solution because models with enough extinction in the B image to allow significantly smaller values of $`R_V^A`$ also imply an intrinsic source spectrum with an inverted 2175Å feature. This is not physically plausible, so it is unlikely that the B image can suffer significant extinction. These conclusions do not change if we assume an SMC-like extinction law for image B rather than a Galactic law.

In summary, both the LBQS 1009–0252 and B 0218+357 lens systems seem to have unusual extinction curves. This is not true of all lenses. Falco et al. (1999) found several systems with extinction curves reasonably consistent with standard Galactic models, and Motta  et al. (2002) conclude that the lens SBS 0909+532 is fitted well by a standard $`R_V=2.1\pm 0.9`$ extinction law. There is one caveat on our results, arising from the fact that we ignored the possibility of wavelength dependent magnifications due to microlensing from the stars in the lens galaxy (see e.g. Yonehara  et al. 1999). Because the deviations from normal extinction curves are large, both systems would have to have large microlensing magnifications and correspondingly small source sizes. At least for LBQS 1009–0252 this can be checked by studying the flux ratios of the images in the emission lines and the continuum of the quasars, where they should be the same if dust is responsible for the wavelength dependence of the flux ratios and very different if microlensing is responsible. Unfortunately, the source in B 0218+357 is a BL Lac object and lacks strong optical emission lines. The flux ratios should also show time variability on time scales of 1–10 years if the cause is microlensing, and the lack of significant changes between our present results and Lehár et al. (2000) argues against microlensing.

Our results confirm the unique value of gravitational lenses for studying extinction laws at cosmological distances. Since the number of known lenses is increasing rapidly, the only barrier to further studies of extinction laws is the need for near-UV HST observations to study the region near the 2175Å feature.

Acknowledgments: JAM is a Ramón y Cajal Fellow from the MCyT of Spain. EEF, CSK and BAM were supported in part by the Smithsonian Institution. These observations were obtained as part of HST grant GO-8252. CSK is supported by NASA ATP grant NAG5-9265.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

The tension between relativity and quantum theory exists even before one tries to include gravity in the picture and even if one tries to take a determinedly operationalist stance one is forced to try to make a careful statement of what quantities may be measured and how (e.g. ). If one is seeking an observer independent alternative to standard quantum theory, however, then that tension escalates into an issue of fundamental importance, whose resolution may lead to the “radical conceptual renewal” anticipated by John Bell . This conceptual advance may be intimately linked with progress in finding a quantum theory of gravity, for example by finding the correct, quantum analogue of the “Bell Causality” condition for causal sets  but we have a more modest objective in this paper. We will investigate a simple observer independent dynamical collapse model on a lattice which is causal in the sense that external agents cannot manipulate it to communicate faster than the lattice causal structure ought to allow .

The model in question is a model for a discrete quantum field theory and it falls in the general category of “dynamical localisation” models (for a substantial review see ). It can be thought of as a causal, discrete Continuous Spontaneous Localisation (CSL) model . Dynamical collapse models admit (at least) two possible interpretations. In the first, which we call the State Interpretation (SI) and which is used by almost all workers in this area, it is the state vector which is real (see for example ). In the second, which we call the Field Interpretation (FI), it is the field values which are real (in the original GRW model  the analogous interpretation first proposed by Bell  and championed by Kent  is that the collapse centres are real).

This choice of interpretation is not something that is often highlighted. We believe that it is a physical choice and it is one of the purposes of the current paper to investigate the consequences of the choice. It may be that SI and FI are operationally indistinguishable in which case there is less motivation for considering one over the other, though each may suggest different directions for future research. It may be that the interpretations lead to verifiably different predictions which would be an extremely interesting result. So far, almost all work on collapse models and comparisons of their implications with experiment have assumed the SI. We would like to take a small step towards determining whether the FI has anything interesting to say about the real world by investigating it in the context of our lattice model.

The paper is structured as follows. In section 2 we review the lattice collapse models of . In section 3 we describe our simulations of the SI and the FI, for a range of parameters for some simple initial states. In section 4 we investigate the decay of superpositions. Section 5 is a description of coarse graining and renormalisation in the model. Section 6 contains a discussion of parameters, a description of future work and speculations on applications to quantum gravity.

## 2 1+1 lattice collapse models

In order to motivate the lattice collapse models, we first review the GRW model, following the presentation of Kent  who calls it the “ur-model” of modern dynamical collapse models. In the GRW model for a single spinless particle in one dimension the wave function $`\psi (x,t)`$ undergoes two types of evolution. Almost all of the time, it follows the Schrödinger equation, but at discrete randomly chosen times it jumps discontinuously, so that

$$\psi \frac{J_{\widehat{x}}\psi }{\left(𝑑x|J_{\widehat{x}}\psi |^2\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}},$$
(2.1)
where $`J_{\widehat{x}}`$ is the function of $`x`$

$$J_{\widehat{x}}(x)=a^{\frac{1}{2}}\pi ^{\frac{1}{4}}e^{(x\widehat{x})^2/2a^2}.$$
(2.2)
The $`\widehat{x}`$ is chosen randomly according to the probability distribution

$$\text{P}rob(\widehat{x})=𝑑x|J_{\widehat{x}}\psi |^2$$
(2.3)
which is properly normalised to be a probability distribution because

$$𝑑\widehat{x}J_{\widehat{x}}(x)^2=1.$$
(2.4)
$`a`$ is a constant parametrising the model. The times of the jumps are given by a Poisson process, with mean interval $`\tau /N`$ between jumps. The parameters $`\tau `$ and $`a`$ are to be thought of as new constants of nature; GRW originally suggested

$$a10^5\text{ }cm,\tau 10^{15}\text{ }sec.$$
(2.5)
In the interpretation of the GRW model due to Bell, it is the sequence of stochastically generated events – $`(\widehat{x},t)`$’s – which constitutes reality in the model and the model assigns a probability distribution to the sample space of all such sequences, $`(\widehat{x}_1,t_1),\mathrm{}(\widehat{x}_n,t_n)`$, which is the probability of that sequence of times (Poisson distributed) multiplied by

$$J_{\widehat{x}_n}U(t_n,t_{n1})\mathrm{}J_{\widehat{x}_1}U(t_1,t_0)\psi (t_0)^2$$
(2.6)
where $`U(t_{i+1},t_i)`$ is the standard Schrödinger time evolution operator between two collapse times.

The lattice collapse models aim to emulate the formalism of the GRW model in the context of a field theory with non-trivial causal structure. They are based on light cone lattice field theories in 1+1 dimensions, introduced in the study of integrable models . We follow the presentation of Samols  of this “bare bones” local quantum field theory. Spacetime is a $`1+1`$ null lattice, periodically identified in space with $`N`$ spatial vertex sites. The links of the lattice are left or right going null rays.

A spacelike surface, $`\sigma `$, is given by the set of links cut by the surface and is specified completely by the position of an initial link and a sequence of $`N`$ right-going and $`N`$ left-going links, moving from left to right, starting with the initial link. An example is shown in figure 1.

The local field variables, $`\alpha `$, live on the links. At link $`l`$ the variable $`\alpha _l`$ takes just two values, $`0`$ or $`1`$, and there is a (“qubit”) Hilbert space, $`_l`$, spanned by two states labelled by $`\alpha _l=0`$ and $`\alpha _l=1`$. At each vertex, $`v`$, the local evolution law is given by a 4-dimensional unitary R-matrix, $`U(v)`$, that evolves from the 4-d Hilbert space that is the tensor product of the Hilbert spaces on the two ingoing links to the 4-d Hilbert space on the two outgoing links.

A quantum state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_\sigma `$ on a spacelike surface, $`\sigma `$, is an element of the $`2^{2N}`$-dimensional Hilbert space, $`_\sigma `$, that is the tensor product of the Hilbert spaces on all the links cut by $`\sigma `$. The $`\alpha `$ basis vectors of $`_\sigma `$ (the only ones we will use: they form the preferred or physical basis) are labelled by the possible field configurations on $`\sigma `$, namely the $`2N`$-element bit strings $`\{0,1\}^{2N}`$. We identify the Hilbert spaces on different surfaces in the obvious way by identifying 2-dimensional Hilbert spaces on links vertically above and below each other on the lattice.

In the standard quantum theory, the unitary evolution of the state to another spacelike surface $`\sigma ^{}`$ is effected by applying all the R-matrices at the vertices between $`\sigma `$ and $`\sigma ^{}`$, in an order respecting the causal order of the vertices. In the simplest case, when only a single vertex is crossed (to the future of $`\sigma `$) the deformation of $`\sigma `$ to $`\sigma ^{}`$ is called an “elementary motion” and an example is shown in figure 1. The R-matrices are left unspecified for now to keep the discussion as general as possible. In a conventional field theory, they will be uniform over the lattice.

We assume that there is an initial spacelike surface, $`\sigma _0`$, with a state, $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_0`$, on that surface. We consider the lattice to extend into the infinite future. The lattice vertices to the future of $`\sigma _0`$ are partially ordered by their spacetime causal order. We define a stem to be a finite subset of the vertices to the future of $`\sigma _0`$ which contains its own past (to the future of $`\sigma _0`$). Consider a natural labelling of all the vertices to the future of $`\sigma _0`$: $`v_1,v_2,v_3\mathrm{}`$ so that if $`v_i`$ is in the causal past of $`v_j`$ then $`i<j`$. This is a linear extension of the partial order and the finite set $`\{v_1,v_2\mathrm{}v_k\}`$ is a stem for any $`k`$. We also introduce the notation $`\sigma _k`$ to denote the spacelike surface reached after the elementary motions across $`v_1,v_2\mathrm{}v_k`$ have been completed. There is a one-to-one correspondence between stems and spacelike surfaces to the future of $`\sigma _0`$.

On each link (ı.e. on each 2-dimensional Hilbert space associated with a link) we consider the two jump operators $`J_0`$ and $`J_1`$ where

$$J_0=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+X^2}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 0\\ 0& X\end{array}\right),J_1=\frac{1}{\sqrt{1+X^2}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}X& 0\\ 0& 1\end{array}\right),$$
(2.7)
and $`0X1`$. These would be projectors onto states $`|0`$ and $`|1`$ respectively if $`X=0`$. They satisfy $`J_0^2+J_1^2=1`$ and are known as “Kraus” operators.

It is convenient to introduce the notation $`\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k}`$ to denote the values of the $`\alpha `$ field variables on the two outgoing links (one left and one right) from the vertex $`v_k`$. Then the possible values of $`\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k}`$ are $`\{(0,0),(0,1),(1,0),(1,1)\}`$ and we define the jump operator $`J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k})`$ on the 4-dimensional Hilbert space on the outgoing links from $`v_k`$ as the tensor product of the two relevant 2-dimensional jump operators, e.g. when $`\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k}=(0,0)`$, $`J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k})=J_0J_0`$. We promote $`J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k})`$ to an operator on the Hilbert space of any spatial surface containing those two links by taking the tensor product with the identity operators on all the other components of the full Hilbert space and, finally, we define a “Heisenberg picture” operator

$$J_{v_k}(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k})U^1(v_1)\mathrm{}U^1(v_k)J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k})U(v_k)\mathrm{}U(v_1).$$
(2.8)
The probability of the field configuration $`\{\widehat{\alpha }_{v_1},\mathrm{}\widehat{\alpha }_{v_n}\}`$ is given by

$$P(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_1},\mathrm{}\widehat{\alpha }_{v_n})=J_{v_n}(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_n})\mathrm{}J_{v_1}(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_1})|\mathrm{\Psi }_0^2.$$
(2.9)
This depends only on the (partial) causal order of the vertices because any other choice of natural labelling of the same vertices gives the same result (because the operators at spacelike vertices commute). It is only the limitation of our mathematical notation that means we have to specify a linear extension to write down the formula (2.9). These probabilities of the field configurations on all the stems are enough, via the standard methods of measure theory, to define a unique probability measure on the sample space of all field configurations on the semi-infinite lattice.

The probability (2.9) can also be written in terms of the “Schrödinger Picture” operators $`J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k})`$

$$P(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_1},\mathrm{}\widehat{\alpha }_{v_n})=J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_n})U(v_n)\mathrm{}J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_1})U(v_1)|\mathrm{\Psi }_0^2.$$
(2.10)
The state on the surface $`\sigma _n`$ that is reached after the elementary motions over vertices $`v_1,\mathrm{}v_n`$ and the field values $`\{\widehat{\alpha }_{v_1},\mathrm{}\widehat{\alpha }_{v_n}\}`$ have been realised is the normalised state

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_n=\frac{J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_n})\mathrm{}J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_1})|\mathrm{\Psi }_0}{J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_n})\mathrm{}J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_1})|\mathrm{\Psi }_0}$$
(2.11)
where this is given in terms of the Schrödinger operators, $`J(\widehat{\alpha }_{v_k})`$. Note that, given a particular realised field configuration on the whole lattice, the state on any arbitrary spacelike surface can be calculated and it is independent of the linear ordering of the vertices to its past that is chosen in order to write it down.

The Field Interpretation FI is captured by the slogan, “the field values are real”. Reality is rooted in spacetime. This is a covariant interpretation because nothing depends on the linear order chosen to express the probability: the joint probability distribution on the field values on the lattice depends only on the causal order of the vertices. Any total ordering used in the analysis is entirely fictitious and unphysical. One can maintain a “block universe” perspective in which the reality is the whole semi-infinite lattice to the future of $`\sigma _0`$ with a field configuration on it. It is also possible, however, to have a more “dynamic” picture of the model in which the “events” (realisations of field values on the outgoing links of a vertex) occur but with the order in which they occur physically being a partial order.

The essence of the State Interpretation SI is, “the state is real”. The fundamental arena of reality is Hilbert space. Given a particular realisation of the field on the entire lattice, there is a unique state associated with each spacelike surface. The SI is covariant in the sense that the state on a spacelike surface is independent of the linear order of the vertices to its past chosen to write down the state mathematically (as in (2.11)). However, as we will see, defining local quantities on the lattice – which is necessary in order to make predictions – will bring in a dependence on hypersurfaces.

We have described two possible interpretations of the formalism, SI and FI. There is another, suggested by Lajos Diósi and Gerard Milburn , which is that it describes, in the standard (no-collapse) quantum theory, an open system coupled to local ancilla systems on each link which are themselves measured. The field values then label the particular outcomes of these ancillae measurements. Alternatively, if the ancilla states are traced over, this would give rise to a density matrix, identical to that obtained by summing $`|\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }|`$ (where $`|\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is given by (2.11)) over the field configurations weighted by their probabilities. The individual histories we consider in FI and SI would then be thought of as a particular “unravelling” of the evolution of this reduced density matrix. Since the lattice field theories (without collapse) described here have been interpreted as “quantum lattice gas automata” (QLGA)  we could therefore interpret the present work as investigations into the effects of environmental decoherence on these interesting proposed architectures for quantum computation.

## 3 Comparing the SI and FI for various parameters

The field variables on the lattice links take only two values, $`\alpha _l=\{0,1\}`$. These values can be thought of as occupation numbers, so that an “occupied” $`|1`$ or “empty” $`|0`$ state can be associated to each link. The diagonal links of the lattice are the possible world-lines for propagation forwards in time of “bare” particles, moving either right or left and the lattice consists therefore of an array of nodes that can be occupied by left or right moving particles. These bare particles would not however, become the physical particles in a eventual continuum theory .

The local evolution law at each vertex on the lattice is encoded in a 4-dimensional unitary $`R`$-matrix, whose entries are the amplitudes connecting the four possible states on the ingoing and outgoing pairs of links at that vertex. Different conservation laws can be imposed on the dynamics of a system by a suitable choice of the $`R`$-matrix, describing the different processes that can take place on the lattice.

For a field theory with spacetime translation invariance, the $`R`$-matrices are also chosen to be uniform over the lattice. One special choice is a particle number preserving matrix, i.e. a $`R`$-matrix conserving occupation numbers at each vertex. Such a matrix can be parametrised as:

$$U=\begin{array}{ccccccc}& & & & & & \\ & (\mathrm{}& 1& 0& 0& 0& )\mathrm{}\\ & 0& ie^{i\alpha }\mathrm{sin}\theta & e^{i\alpha }\mathrm{cos}\theta & 0\\ & 0& e^{i\alpha }\mathrm{cos}\theta & ie^{i\alpha }\mathrm{sin}\theta & 0\\ & 0& 0& 0& e^{i\beta }\end{array}.$$
(3.1)
The local unitary evolution given by the $`R`$-matrix (3.1) imposes both particle number conservation and parity invariance (symmetry under left-right exchange) throughout the lattice. An $`R`$-matrix of this type leads to a particular fermionic model, the massive Thirring model, in a suitable continuum limit of the unitary (no collapse) theory .

Each of the six non-zero amplitudes can be thought of as indicating possible paths for a particle at each vertex. These paths are symbolically indicated in equation (3.1) by $``$ for a left moving particle, $``$ for a right moving particle. Without loss of generality, the “nothing to nothing” amplitude is chosen to be 1. The “interaction” term between two ingoing particles is a phase multiplication only, $`e^{i\beta }`$. For the simulations presented in this paper, we set $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ to $`0`$.

Variation of $`\theta `$ controls the average speed of the particles on the lattice: if $`\theta =\pi /2`$ the R-matrix is proportional to the identity matrix, and the particles change direction at each vertex and there is no propagation in space and the particles have infinite “mass”. At the other extreme, with $`\theta =0`$ the R-matrix interchanges the states on the two incoming links, so that the particles never change direction and follow null lines on the lattice and can be thought of as massless.

In our simulations we are limited as to lattice size by the exponential growth of the problem in vertex number. For a lattice with $`N`$ vertices, this means handling vectors with $`2^{2N}`$ components, and dealing with $`N`$ multiplications of these vectors by matrices of dimensions $`2^{2N}\times 2^{2N}`$ at each time step (each constant time slice). We ran simulations for $`N=8`$, 9 and 10.

The simulation proceeds in stages as follows. Given the evolution up to surface $`\sigma _n`$ (in other words we have the surface, realised field values at all vertices between $`\sigma _0`$ and $`\sigma _n`$ and the normalised state on $`\sigma _n`$, $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_n`$, depending on those past realised values according to (2.11)), an elementary motion is chosen at random from those possible with equal probability. The motion is implemented resulting in a new hypersurface $`\sigma _{n+1}`$ and and the state is unitarily evolved to a state on $`\sigma _{n+1}`$

$$|\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_{n+1}=U(v_{n+1})|\mathrm{\Psi }_n.$$
(3.2)
Field values at the new vertex $`v_{n+1}`$ (strictly, on the two outgoing links from the new vertex) are chosen at random according to the probability distribution

$$\text{P}rob(\widehat{\alpha }_{n+1})=J(\widehat{\alpha }_{n+1})|\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_{n+1}^2.$$
(3.3)
This is the conditional probability distribution on field values at $`v_{n+1}`$ given the field values that have already been realised to the past of $`\sigma _n`$.

If the field value $`\widehat{\alpha }_{n+1}`$ is realised then the state is “hit” and becomes the new state on $`\sigma _{n+1}`$

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{n+1}=\frac{J(\widehat{\alpha }_{n+1})|\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_{n+1}}{J(\widehat{\alpha }_{n+1})|\stackrel{~}{\mathrm{\Psi }}_{n+1}^2}$$
(3.4)
and the process repeats.

Note that this evolution scheme is tantamount to putting a specific probability distribution on linear orderings of the vertices – fixed by the rule for choosing elementary motions at random with equal probability from those possible at each stage – and choosing one particular linear ordering according to that probability distribution. The distribution we have chosen is generated by a Markovian rule for evolution and thus is particularly easy to simulate. Other rules can be chosen – for example, one might choose to weight all linear orderings equally. Due to the fact that the probability distribution on the field configurations depends only on the causal order of the vertices, the results of the simulation for the field values do not depend on the choice of distribution for the linear order: any choice will lead to a correct simulation of the physical distribution on field configurations (we could even choose a fixed linear ordering with, for example, increasing labels from left to right, row by row). In the simulation of the evolution of the state, however, the probability distribution on linear orderings does play a role because a linear ordering is equivalent to a sequence of surfaces and in the simulation, the state is only calculated on the surfaces that are included in the chosen sequence. Even so, the state can still be thought of as covariant because it is determined on every surface by the realised field configuration, even though our simulation doesn’t actually calculate it.

We will show two types of plots. In both of them each cell corresponds to a single link of the lattice (so that there are two cells per vertex), as shown in figure 2.

In one type of plot (FI) the cell is white if the field value is 0 and black if the field value is 1. In the second type (SI) the darkness of the cell is (positively) proportional to the square of the amplitude (according to the state at that stage of the evolution) for the field value 1 on the link. (in other words the plot is of “stuff” ). It is important to emphasize that this SI plot is not the probability that the field value on the link will be 1. Indeed, let the link in question be $`l`$ and suppose, at some stage in the dynamics, $`l`$ is one of the outgoing links from the vertex that has just been evolved over. Let the state on the current spacelike surface through $`l`$ be denoted schematically by

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }=a|0+b|1$$
(3.5)
where $`|0`$ ($`|1`$) is short hand for the normalised superposition of all the terms in the state in which the value of the field on $`l`$ is 0 (1). The probability that the field will be 1 on $`l`$ (conditional on the past evolution to that stage) is

$$\frac{|a|^2X^2+|b|^2}{1+X^2},$$
(3.6)
whereas the square of the amplitude for field value 1, which we show in the SI plot, is $`|b|^2`$.

Here, in defining this local quantity on the lattice that we can plot and analyse, we have introduced a dependence on spacelike surfaces (and hence on the choice we have made of a probability distribution on sequences of surfaces). Since, although the state on a surface is a covariant quantity, the value of $`|b|^2`$ on a link is not covariant because it depends on the state on an entire surface through that link: choose a different surface and the value of $`|b|^2`$ will be different (due to the non-unitarity of the hits). In our simulation, the surface through the link is whatever it happens to be at that stage of the evolution – in other words the surface is chosen at random according to the probability distribution on surfaces defined by the Markovian evolution rule for elementary motions. So our state plot of the quantity $`|b|^2`$ depends on that choice. A different choice (e.g. equally weighted linear orderings of vertices, or one fixed deterministic ordering) would give a different state plot. Alternatively, a covariant choice for the surface to use in calculating $`|b|^2`$ on a link – not equivalent to any kind of “evolution” law for surfaces, stochastic or otherwise – would be the boundary of the causal past of the vertex from which the link is outgoing. We have not investigated these alternatives.

In figure 3 the plots are grouped in pairs (a,b), (c,d) and (e,f) of (SI, FI) plots. The members of a pair have the same parameters and the plots in the pair refer to exactly the same run. The initial state is a field eigenstate with two particles and $`\theta =\pi /6`$ in all three pairs. The pairs have different values of $`X`$: $`X=0.1`$ for (a,b), $`0.3`$ for (c,d) and $`0.95`$ for (e,f). The plots all begin on the row of links immediately above the initial surface because there are no field values on the initial surface itself.

We can see that when the jump operators are close to being projectors the state remains very close to being in an eigenstate: the R-matrices introduce superpositions which are essentially killed at each step by the jump operators. The two plots (a) and (b) in figure 3 are virtually identical, as they should be and the trajectories seen are very close to being classical random walks. Indeed, if $`X`$ were exactly 0, they would be classical (non-Markovian) random walks where, at each vertex, the walker either continues in the null direction it is going in with probability $`\mathrm{cos}^2(\pi /6)=3/4`$ or changes direction with probability $`\mathrm{sin}^2(\pi /6)=1/4`$.

As $`X`$ is increased with fixed $`\theta `$, the balance changes and more signs of superposition appear in the SI plot whilst the field plot starts to look much more noisy. For $`X=0.95`$, the state plot resembles the unitary dynamics shown in the right hand plot of figure 9 in  and the field plot has no discernable structure any more.

The same trend is apparent in figure 4 which shows three runs with initial state a field eigenstate with 4 particles and with $`\theta =4\pi /9`$. The plots are again grouped in (SI, FI) pairs (a,b), (c,d) and (e,f) with three different choices of $`X`$, $`X=0.1`$, $`0.5`$ and $`0.93`$ respectively. The particles trajectories are close to being vertical because $`\theta `$ is close to $`\pi /2`$ illustrating how $`\theta `$ controls the speed of the particles on the lattice.

## 4 Collapse of superpositions

In order to fully justify the title “dynamical collapse model” it needs to be shown that when only small numbers of degrees of freedom are involved, the model behaves virtually indistinguishably from ordinary quantum mechanics but that superpositions of “macroscopically different” states collapse rapidly. We will present analytic and numerical evidence that this is so – to the extent that we can interpret “macroscopic” – if we tune the parameter $`X`$ to be sufficiently close to 1.

We can see that as $`X`$ gets close to 1, the realised field configurations become more and more noisy until it is impossible to discern any structure by eye (as seen for example in figure 3 (f)). Indeed when $`X=1`$, the behaviour of the field is just that of independent choices of 0 or 1 on each link with probabilities $`1/2`$ and $`1/2`$. The state, on the other hand, decouples from the field and evolves deterministically according to the standard unitary evolution. It seems likely that tuning $`X`$ to be close to 1 will allow us to make the dynamics of the state as close as we like to ordinary Schrödinger evolution for as long as we choose. Since we are aiming to make a comparison to ordinary quantum mechanics we study only the SI in this section.

Let $`X=1ϵ`$ with $`0<ϵ<<1`$ and let $`\theta =\pi /2`$ so the R-matrix is the identity and there is no “Hamiltonian” evolution. Consider the simple case of a single link on which the state is the superposition $`|1+|0`$ (suitably normalised). After $`k`$ time steps, the state will be $`X^{m_0m_1}|1+|0`$ (suitably normalised) where $`m_i`$ is the number of times the field value $`i`$ is realised and $`m_1+m_0=k`$. This is the discrete ‘quantum gambler’s ruin’ model considered in . If the probabilities of 1 and 0 were $`1/2`$ each then this would be governed by the simplest random walk on the integers ($`m_0`$ is the number of steps to the left and $`m_1`$ is the number of steps to the right). The expected value of the distance from the origin is of order the square root of the number of steps and so after $`k`$ steps the state is expected to be the superposition of the two original states with one suppressed (with respect to the other) by a factor $`X^\sqrt{k}\mathrm{exp}(\sqrt{k}ϵ)`$. When $`k`$ is large this means that one of the terms in the superposition is exponentially suppressed within a number of time steps of order $`ϵ^2`$. With this simple random walk, the superposition would always come back with full force because the walker always returns to the origin. However the probabilities in the collapse model are not constant but depend on the state and the general theory of collapse models as stochastic processes in Hilbert space  shows that in the limit of late times, the superposition is eventually suppressed.

For fixed $`ϵ`$, we expect the decay time for a superposition of two $`\alpha `$-eigenvectors to depend on the number of alpha values that differ in the two configurations. For example, if the superposition is of a state with $`l`$ particles on the left half of the lattice and a state with $`l`$ particles on the right half, the decay time will scale like $`l^2`$.

These expectations are supported qualitatively in figures 6 and 6. Figure 6 is two SI plots showing decaying single particle superpositions for two different values of $`ϵ`$ ($`ϵ=0.25`$, $`0.20`$) on an 8 vertex lattice. Figure 6 is an SI plot of a run with a 10 particle superposition initial state and $`ϵ=0.05`$ on a 10 vertex lattice. $`\theta =\pi /2`$ in both figures so there is no Hamiltonian evolution. We see that decreasing $`ϵ`$ increases the decay time between figure 6 (a) and (b) significantly. The even smaller $`ϵ`$ of $`0.05`$ would result in a much longer decay time for a 1 particle superposition but for a 10 particle superposition figure 6 it results in a comparable decay time to figure 6 (b).

More quantitatively, from the analysis above, we expect that the “decay time”, $`T_{decay}`$ scales like $`ϵ^2`$ and figure 7 is a plot of over 35 runs on an 8 vertex lattice with different $`X`$ values which supports this. For each run, the superpositions were of 1 particle states, with equal initial amplitudes. The decay time is defined to be the time on the lattice at which the squared modulus of the amplitude of one term of the superposition falls to one hundredth of its initial size (and the term remains suppressed after that, which is checked by running the simulation for much longer, not shown in the plots).

Figure 8 is a plot which is broadly consistent with our expectation for the dependence of the decay time on the particle number. The log of the decay time (as defined for figure 7) of a superposition of two field eigenstates, one with $`l`$ particles on the left half of the lattice and one with $`l`$ particles on the right, is plotted against $`\mathrm{log}l`$ for a fixed value of $`ϵ=0.015`$. The decay times for the runs with small particle number, particularly for single particle superpositions, seem to be too low for the fit. This is likely to be because the value of $`ϵ`$ is not small enough to be able to neglect the $`𝒪(ϵ^2)`$ terms.

The decay times for models with general R-matrix will depend on the extent to which the dynamics and the collapse effects compete. We can see that if the R-matrix is very different from a permutation of basis vectors (in our case a permutation corresponds to $`\theta =0`$ or $`\pi /2`$) and the jump operators are very close to $`\mathrm{𝟏}/\sqrt{2}`$, the Hamiltonian dynamics will win the competition: the superpositions that the jump operators are patiently suppressing with their tiny hits would keep being reintroduced with a vengeance by each R-matrix application. On the other hand an $`ϵ`$ close to 1 will not allow any superpositions to persist, whatever the R-matrix is, illustrated by figure 3. Thus, for any R-matrix, an $`ϵ`$ can be chosen that gives collapse of superpositions of field eigenstates but if $`ϵ`$ is too small, superpositions will always reappear. An interesting question is whether, for a fixed R-matrix, there is a critical value of $`ϵ`$ between these two different sorts of behaviour and what the theory looks like there.

Another interesting direction is to consider the continuum limit in which the lattice spacing $`a0`$ with $`LNa`$ held fixed and simultaneously $`ϵ0`$. Looking at the “bare continuum limit” taken by Destri and deVega, suggests that $`ϵ`$ behaves as $`ϵ=𝒪(\sqrt{a})`$. In that case, $`\theta =𝒪(ϵ^2)`$ and for small $`ϵ`$ the R-matrix will indeed be very close to a permutation.

## 5 Coarse graining and renormalisation

At first sight it appears that the requirement that superpositions of single particles persist for a long time means that the FI is untenable. Since the decay time is inversely proportional to $`ϵ^2`$, $`ϵ`$ must be tuned to be very small and the probabilities of 1 and 0 on each link are both $`1/2+𝒪(ϵ)`$. This means that the fundamental field configurations become extremely noisy. We suggest that by a process of coarse graining and renormalisation of the field values, the FI can remain viable and the fields display interesting structure.

For $`ϵ=0`$, coarse graining give us the statistics of discretised Gaussian white noise, i.e. the binomial distribution: if we coarse grain the field values over square blocks of the lattice containing $`M=m\times m`$ lattice vertices – that is $`2m^2`$ links – the mean of the distribution over the averaged block field values is $`\mu =1/2`$ and the variance is $`\sigma ^2=1/(8M)`$. This is independent of the state.

For $`ϵ>0`$ and the vacuum state $`|00\mathrm{}0`$, with particle number preserving R-matrix, the state is preserved and the stochastic field dynamics is an independent choice on each link of 0 with probability $`1/(1+X^2)`$ and 1 with probability $`X^2/(1+X^2)`$. For the coarse grained field we again have the statistics of a binomial distribution with mean $`\mu =X^2/(1+X^2)=1/2+𝒪(ϵ)`$ and variance $`\sigma ^2=X^2/(2(1+X^2)^2M)`$. Let us call this the vacuum distribution for a particular $`ϵ`$. We want to “subtract” this fluctuating vacuum background and see if the remaining field has interesting features. The difference, for each block, between the mean of the vacuum distribution on coarse grained field values and the mean of the distribution corresponding to a general initial state will be of order $`ϵ`$ and so to “see” these differences we need to renormalise the field.

Given a block size $`m`$ we define a renormalised field in the following way. Let $`\alpha _m`$ be the average value of the field in an $`m\times m`$ block. Then the renormalised field in that block is

$$\alpha _m^R=ϵ^1(\alpha _mX^2/(1+X^2)).$$
(5.1)
Although the underlying (bare) field values are only 0’s and 1’s and the averaged field values therefore lie between 0 and 1, the renormalised values extend over a larger and larger range as $`m`$ increases (with large field values exponentially unlikely).

We want this renormalised field not to be swamped by vacuum fluctuations and so we need the square root of the variance of the distribution to be much smaller than the difference in the means, which implies that $`mϵ1`$. Note that if a continuum limit were taken with $`a`$ the lattice spacing going to zero, it would be reasonable for $`ma`$ – the physical “discrimination scale” – to remain fixed. In which case $`m=𝒪(a^1)=𝒪(ϵ^2)`$.

We see that is hard to simulate this coarse grained field dynamics for small $`ϵ`$ because our lattice size doesn’t allow the large block size that would be needed. Instead we offer the following argument as to why it is plausible that the theory is non-trivial.

As a substitute for showing the field values themselves, we consider renormalised and enhanced probabilities on the links. Consider, at some stage in the dynamics, the link $`l`$ which is one of the outgoing links from the vertex that has just been evolved over. Then the state on the surface through $`l`$ is given by (3.5) and the probability that the field will be 1 on $`l`$ is given by (3.6). When $`ϵ`$ is very small, this probability is within order $`ϵ`$ of the vacuum value $`X^2/(1+X^2)`$. Subtracting off this vacuum probability, and enhancing the contrast by dividing this by $`ϵ`$, we obtain the value $`|b|^2`$ (to order $`ϵ`$). This is exactly the quantity we show in the SI plots (it is the stuff).

We are led to the conclusion that when the state shows structure on some coarse grained scale, it is likely that the renormalised coarse grained field also will and we find a strong connection between the Field and State Interpretations.

## 6 Discussion

We have presented analysis and numerical simulations of lattice models that can be thought of as dynamical collapse models on a discrete spacetime with a fixed causal structure. At the very least the discreteness and finiteness of the model allows us to see clearly the elegant mechanism of the dynamical localisation models of Ghirardi, Rimini, Weber and Pearle at work. The competition between collapse fuelled by the stochasticity and the Hamiltonian evolution is seen clearly: the jump operators suppress superpositions in the field eigenstates and the R-matrices reintroduce them at each step.

We have highlighted the choice between the State Interpretation and the Field Interpretation. We have emphasised the fact that the SI struggles to be covariant in the presence of a non-trivial causal structure due to the dependence of local quantities on a choice of hypersurface through the local region on which the quantity is defined. The FI on the other hand is manifestly covariant and respects the causal structure.

We have presented evidence that the Field Interpretation can remain interesting, through the noise, by coarse graining and renormalising the fundamental field configurations. This clearly has some attractive features: there really are vacuum fluctuations at some fundamental scale but coarse graining washes them out. It remains to be discovered whether, for a value of $`ϵ`$ close enough to zero to maintain microscopic superpositions, the renormalised coarse grained field has interesting structure. The fact that the linear size of the coarse graining blocks must grow as $`ϵ`$ gets small means that we cannot look for this directly in our simulations on small lattices. However, we have shown that this question is closely related to the behaviour of the state on coarse grained scales: if the SI predicts interesting coarse grained structure then so does the FI.

An interesting issue that arises for collapse models especially in the relativistic context, is that of energy conservation. The consensus seems to be that collapse models – and non-unitary evolution in general – if local and causal will tend to violate energy-momentum conservation, more or less severely. In the GRW model, that can be seen simply by noting that the collapses tend to cause wavepackets to narrow in position and so to broaden in momentum. These conclusions, however, have been drawn in the SI in which the state is used to calculate the various quantities. The question of whether energy-momentum conservation holds, and if not how large the violations will be, will have to be readdessed in the FI where it is likely to take on rather a different character. For example, the fundamental field configurations fluctuate wildly (in the continuum, they would be non-differentiable and perhaps not even continuous) and so a microscopic definition of energy, say, would not be possible. A definition depending on some coarse graining would be necessary. We leave these questions open for now.

The FI suffers from the defect that it is necessary to know the state on a spacelike surface in order to predict the future behaviour of the field. It seems strange therefore not to ascribe reality to the state as well. Indeed, the interpretation in which both the stochastic quantity (here the field) and the state vector are real has been proposed by Diósi in many works over the years (already implicitly in ). There is no getting around the reality of the state if one wants to maintain a Markovian dynamics, but if one is prepared to give up the Markovian condition, it might be possible to show that the state on a spatial surface is actually determined, for all practical purposes, by the realised field values that have occured in the past back to some time depth $`T_{memory}`$. We will report on work bearing on this issue in a future paper.

In the original GRW model there are two parameters, essentially the microscopic decay time, $`T_{decay}`$, for collapse of a superposition of a single particle in two different positions and the spatial “discrimination” scale, $`X_{discrim}`$, which is the smallest distance that the collapse can resolve. In the GRW model the values $`T_{decay}=10^{16}s`$ and $`X_{discrim}=10^5cm`$ are chosen. These two parameters appear in the current setting incarnated as the lattice spacing and the parameter $`ϵ`$. Given a fixed lattice spacing, demanding a particular value for $`T_{decay}`$ fixes the discrimination scale in the following way.

Let $`T_0`$ be the lattice spacing in time so that $`X_0=cT_0`$ is the lattice spacing in space. Since the decay time scales like $`ϵ^2`$ we have that $`T_{decay}=kT_0ϵ^2`$ where k is a dimensionless number that depends on the dynamics i.e on the R-matrix. The discrimination length scale is $`X_{discrim}=mX_0`$ where $`m`$ is the number of vertices in one coarse graining block dimension. We know that $`Kmϵ1`$. Putting these together we obtain

$`X_{discrim}`$ $`=Kk^{\frac{1}{2}}X_0\left({\displaystyle \frac{T_{decay}}{T_0}}\right)^{\frac{1}{2}}`$ (6.1)
$`=Kk^{\frac{1}{2}}\times 10^3\text{c}m`$ (6.2)
if we choose $`T_{decay}10^{16}s`$ as in the GRW and CSL models and make a “natural” choice for the lattice spacing, namely the Planck scale ($`X_0=10^{33}cm`$). $`X_{discrim}`$ is in danger of being too large, because $`K1`$. But if the R-matrix can be tuned to compete with the collapse mechanism to the extent that $`k`$ is large enough so that $`K/\sqrt{k}10^2`$ then we can obtain the GRW value. There is therefore a hint that one of the extra physical constants of the GRW/CSL models can be eliminated by invoking a fundamental spacetime discreteness at the Planck scale.

This is to be regarded as merely a hint for several reasons including the fact that the diamond lattice used here is not Lorentz invariant. In order to produce a model that has a chance of being Lorentz invariant we would either have to take the continuum limit of the lattice models (and deal with the issues that arise there: non-physicality of the “bare” particles, the fact that the physical vacuum contains infinite numbers of bare particles etc.) or build a collapse model on a Lorentz invariant discrete structure to which Minkowski spacetime is an approximation. The only known example of the latter is a causal set, which can be thought of as a discrete “random sampling” of the causal structure of Minkowski spacetime . While it seems possible formally to write down a collapse model on a general causal set, with Hilbert spaces on the links and “local” evolution and collapse rules, the analysis and simulation of such a model is immensely more challenging. General models of this type have been considered  in which the jumps are considered to be interventions of some external agent on an open quantum system. In  the dual situation where Hilbert spaces live on the vertices is considered from a density matrix perspective.

Speculating much further, one motivation for studying collapse models is to find an observer independent approach to quantum theory that can be applied to the problem of quantum gravity, and here it is harder to see how this might work. In the causal set approach to quantum gravity, the major outstanding problem is to find a quantum dynamics that will produce causal sets that are well-approximated by continuum spacetimes. The models investigated above could be viewed as stochastic models for generating causal sets from the diamond lattice in the following way: when the field value is 0 delete the link from the lattice and when it is 1 keep the link. This is therefore a specific, causal example of the type of models described in .

One difficulty with this proposal for dynamically generating causal sets is that the only causal sets that can arise in this way (by deleting links from the diamond lattice) are very special and look nothing like the causal sets which have Minkowski space (or any other continuum spacetime) as an approximation. For example, each element can have at most two future and two past links. In order to give ourselves a fighting chance of generating in this way a causal set that looks like a continuum spacetime, we would need, rather, to consider deleting relations from a causal set (a relation is anything implied by the links – including the links themselves – by transitivity). It suffices, then, to consider deleting relations from the causal set that contains all possible relations: the totally ordered causal set known as the chain.

It isn’t hard to to see how one might form models along these lines: for each positive integer $`N`$, consider a collapse model for a $`\{0,1\}`$ valued field living on the $`N(N1)/2`$ relations of the $`N`$ element chain. This generates a probability distribution on all labelled $`N`$ element causal sets. We impose the condition that all these distributions must be consistent with each other: the induced probability distribution on $`N`$ element causal sets from the distribution for $`N+1`$ must agree with the previous one. We also require that the distributions must be generally covariant: the probability of two finite labelled causal sets which are isomorphic must be equal. The models will be thus be examples of the classical sequential growth models considered in  (indeed our $`\{0,1\}`$ field is reminiscent of the “Ising matter” interpretion given therein) but without the condition of Bell Causality, which we do not want to impose in quantum gravity because it would lead to the Bell Inequalities. One problem with these models without the Bell Causality condition is that there will be a huge number of them. Without the discovery of an additional well-motivated physical criterion to limit the possibilities, there seems little reason to expect they have anything to do with quantum gravity.

## 7 Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Lajos Diósi, Joe Henson, Gerard Milburn, Trevor Samols and Rob Spekkens for helpful discussions. We also thank Paul Dixon for help with the simulations.