Paper detail

The subtle sound of quantum jumps

Could we hear the pop of a wave-function collapse, and if so, what would it sound like? There exist reconstructions or modifications of quantum mechanics (collapse models) where this archetypal signature of randomness exists and can in principle be witnessed. But, perhaps surprisingly, the resulting sound is disappointingly banal, indistinguishable from any other click. The problem of finding the right description of the world between two completely different classes of models -- where wave functions jump and where they do not -- is empirically undecidable. Behind this seemingly trivial observation lie deep lessons about the rigidity of quantum mechanics, the difficulty to blame unpredictability on intrinsic randomness, and more generally the physical limitations to our knowledge of reality.