Spreading velocity of a relativistic wave packet

J.P. Jeukenne, Claude Mahaux

Ladislav Kocis

Carlos Almeida, Arthur Jabs

We present a simple general proof that the spreading velocity of a relativistic free wave packet of de Broglie waves is limited. For a wide class of packets we confirm that the limit is the velocity of light, and we show how this limit is approached when the width Δp of the wave packet in momentum space tends to infinity and the minimum width σ(t=0) in ordinary space tends to zero.

Finn Bakke, Harald Wergeland

Henry M. Bradford

The usual textbook discussions of the velocity and spreading of a wave packet are based on special cases and approximations which have a limited range of validity. In this paper more general relations are obtained by considering the time dependence of the moments of a wave packet. Both a packet of real sinusoidal plane waves (a real pulse, e.g., sound) and a packet of complex exponential plane waves (e.g., the quantum-mechanical wave function of a free particle) are considered. The results are similar if the real wave packet contains no standing wave components. It is shown that the centroid of a wave packet moves at a constant velocity which is a weighted average of the group velocity. The spreading of the wave packet depends on the product of the variance of the group velocity and the square of the time interval before or after the time of minimum packet width. The packet moves and spreads like a collection of particles in free flight, in which the velocities of the particles are the group velocities of the wave components of the packet.

Peter Hawkes, Erwin K. Kasper