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Superluminal Velocity Explained

Tamás Lajtner

Published Feb 1, 2021• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Superluminal velocities do exist in tunneling. In theories don’t. Why? Because physicists think the speed of light in spacetime is the absolute speed limit. The superluminal velocity cannot be explained within the spacetime model. How to explain the superluminal velocity during tunneling? Supposing more spaces and more times. The superluminal, tunneling particle travels in barrier. The barrier is an object from our viewpoint. But the particle uses this barrier as space. Studying the tunneling, there are many spaces. Every space has its own time unit and unit space distance. The law of speed limit remains true in every space. The speed of light is the speed limit in every space, but from our viewpoint the same particle travels at different velocities in different spaces. It can be summarized in one sentence: A step in the country of giants is longer than in the country of dwarves. The paper is an excerpt out of the book entitled “19 false axioms of physics”.

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Superluminal velocities do exist in tunneling. In theories don’t. Why? Because physicists think the speed of light in spacetime is the absolute speed limit. The superluminal velocity cannot be explained within the spacetime model. How to explain the superluminal velocity during tunneling? Supposing more spaces and more times. The superluminal, tunneling particle travels in barrier. The barrier is an object from our viewpoint. But the particle uses this barrier as space. Studying the tunneling, there are many spaces. Every space has its own time unit and unit space distance. The law of speed limit remains true in every space. The speed of light is the speed limit in every space, but from our viewpoint the same particle travels at different velocities in different spaces. It can be summarized in one sentence: A step in the country of giants is longer than in the country of dwarves. The paper is an excerpt out of the book entitled “19 false axioms of physics”.
An explanation for superluminal phenomena based on wave-particle duality of photons is suggested. A single photon may be regarded as a wave packet, whose spatial extension is its coherence volume. As a photon propagates as a wave train in vacuum, its velocity is just the speed of light. When it tunnels through a barrier as a particle, its wave function collapses and it will travel faster than light. Superluminal motion can occur only within the coherence length and the time constrained by uncertainty principle. A massive particle cannot be superluminal during the tunneling process. So superluminality does not violate causality. As for the superluminal and negative group velocities in anomalously dispersive medium, they are merely reshaping effect of the pulse, and they will become subluminal at large distances. A couple of experiments are proposed to test the superluminal phenomena.
Superluminal signal velocity is widely assumed to confront Einstein causality and thus the Special Theory of Relativity (STR). Actually, there is only the tunneling mechanism known to permit superluminal signal velocities at present. The demonstrated negative group velocity experiments don't represent superluminal signal velocities. In those experiments only the signal's peak traveled faster than light and the signal was reshaped. In this Note we shall discuss why tunneling allows superluminal signal velocities. However, opposed to text books on STR we have shown that a superluminal signal beam does not allow the design of a time machine.
This paper advances the core thesis that the speed of light is the limit of physical quantities, not the limit of spacetime quantities. The "superluminal" correlations of quantum entanglement and the "superluminal" recession of distant galaxies in cosmic expansion are not violations of relativity, but rather because these two phenomena belong to the category of spacetime quantities and fall outside the jurisdiction of the speed of light. Through the methodology of "hierarchical reclassification," this paper separates physical quantities (matter, energy, signals, causal chains) from spacetime quantities (spacetime structure, expansion, connectivity, topological relations), pointing out that the definition of velocity (m/s) presupposes "matter moving through space"; when the object of discussion is spacetime itself, the concept of "velocity" no longer applies. This paper further clarifies that there is no fundamental contradiction between relativity and quantum mechanics requiring "unification"—they describe effective laws at different levels (the L4 physical level and the L1–L2 quantum level). The "superluminal paradox" that has long troubled physics is, in essence, a result of category misplacement.
Experiments have shown that individual photons penetrate an optical tunnel barrier with an effective group velocity considerably greater than the vacuum speed of light. The experiments were conducted with a two-photon parametric down-conversion light source, which produced correlated, but random, emissions of photon pairs. The two photons of a given pair were emitted in slightly different directions so that one photon passed through the tunnel barrier, while the other photon passed through the vacuum. The time delay for the tunneling photon relative to its twin was measured by adjusting the path length difference between the two photons in a Hong-Ou-Mandel interferometer, in order to achieve coincidence detection. We found that the photon transit time through the barrier was smaller than the twin photon’s transit time through an equal distance in vacuum, indicating that the process of tunneling in quantum mechanics is superluminal. Various conflicting theories of tunneling times are compared with experiment. An introduction to an introduction Tunneling, the quantum mechanical process by which a particle can penetrate a classically forbidden region of space, is one of the most mysterious phenomena of quantum mechanics. Yet it is one of the most basic and important processes in Nature, without which we could not even exist, for tunneling is involved in the very first step of the nuclear reaction, p + p → d + e + νe, which powers the Sun, the source of energy for life on the Earth. ∗ On appointment as a Miller Research Professor in the Miller Institute for Basic Research
The widespread belief, that energy and signal velocities are bounded by the speed of light in vacuum has been challenged in recent years by observations of superluminal propagation of classical evanescent modes in tunneling time experiments. These experiments thus provide a frame for testing the limits of transport velocities physically achievable. Obvious and hidden time-scales involved in tunneling time experiments are discussed focussing on optical tunneling in frustrated total internal reflection. A suggestion for a direct test of the energy transport velocity—also of interest in future hyper-fast space travel—is presented. Related questions touching our current understanding of some fundamental concepts in physics are addressed.