Paper detail

Chameleonic equivalence postulate and wave function collapse

A chameleonic solution to the cosmological constant problem and the non-equivalence 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 that model and we are led to a chameleonic equivalence postulate (CEP). Whenever a theory satisfies our CEP (and some other additional conditions), a density-dependence of the mass of matter fields is naturally present. Let us summarize the main results of this paper. 1) The CEP can be considered the microscopic counterpart of the Einstein's Equivalence Principle and, hence, a chameleonic description of quantum gravity is obtained: in our model, (quantum) gravitation is equivalent 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 function collapse. The collapse is induced by the chameleonic nature of the theory. We discuss the collapse for a Stern-Gerlach experiment and for a diffraction experiment with electrons. More research efforts are necessary to verify whether these ideas are compatible with phenomenological constraints.