NACE: A Pentacene-Doped Naphthalene Matter-Wave Interferometer for Testing Objective Reduction in Protected Aromatic Quantum Systems

We propose NACE-LNGS (Naphthalene Aromatic Collapse Experiment), a dedicated experiment designed to test Penrose’s Objective Reduction (OR) mechanism using diamagnetically levitated pentacene-doped naphthalene nanoparticles. Unlike the original LNGS experiment (Grand Sasso), searching for spontaneous radiation from nuclear-scale collapses in high-purity germanium crystal detectors [1,2], our NACE approach probes mesoscopic superpositions in a protected aromatic π-electron environment that directly mimics the “quantum underground” hypothesized in the Orch-OR theory of consciousness [3,4]. By employing multi-spin Stern-Gerlach matter-wave interferometry on hyperpolarized nuclear-spin ensembles (N ≈ 10^7–10^8 spins per nanoparticle), the experiment achieves unprecedented sensitivity to gravitational self-energy-induced decoherence while operating in the ultra-low-background environment similar to one deployed  in LNGS experiment. We highlight the material properties, experimental protocol, noise budget, and sensitivity analysis. In the discussion, we reflect on the 2022 LNGS (Grand Sasso) null results that significantly constrained the simplest Diósi–Penrose (DP) model, the current status of Orch-OR, and why NACE protocol offers potentially the first realistic path to confirming OR as a biologically relevant process confined to shielded aromatic pathways - extrapolating also prebiotic quantum substrates on early Earth.