Collapse-induced orientational localization of rigid rotors [Invited]

We show how the ro-translational motion of anisotropic particles is affected by the model of continuous spontaneous localization (CSL), the most prominent hypothetical modification of the Schrodinger equation restoring realism on the macroscale. We derive the master equation describing collapse-induced spatio-orientational decoherence and demonstrate how it leads to linear- and angular-momentum diffusion. Since the associated heating rates scale differently with the CSL parameters, the latter can be determined individually by measuring the random motion of a single levitated nanorotor. (C) 2017 Optical Society of America.