arXiv2026
We argue that semiclassical gravity can be made consistent if quantum systems source gravity only when they participate in non-gravitational interactions that can lead to environment-induced decoherence, and which select conditional states that lead them to source such a field. If they do not participate in those interactions, systems do not contribute their stress-energy to the semiclassical equations, where regions lacking a gravitational field may remain flat. This proposal of conditional gravity is testable by probing the gravitational field sourced by systems, which should depend entirely on environment-induced decoherence in this context; by gravity not mediating entanglement in the Bose-Marletto-Vedral (BMV) experiment; and by how the reversibility of the initial state in this experiment would depend solely on this decoherence, distinguishing it from competing approaches. Our approach involves different theories. A distinct one involves chains of causally ordered interactions between quantum matter fields, which may show how gravity arises from QFT, and provide benefits to other areas of physics. To distinguish between the different theories that our approach allows for, and possibly test them, we present a generalization of the process operator and quantum causal models, which is applicable to quantum measurements in QFT implemented via the Fewster-Verch framework. However, we will also propose another approach. These different theories can be seen as arising from different ways quantum operations are classically controlled, since outcomes obtained along this chain determine which quantum operations are implemented next. We propose an experiment to test them using quantum circuits, which may allow us to probe how precisely gravity arises from quantum systems. We thus propose another application of quantum computers, which is to control the sourcing of gravity by quantum systems.