Significant advances in the study of tachyons, particles theorized to travel faster than light, have revealed that previous inconsistencies in quantum mechanics arose from flawed boundary conditions. A new framework that takes into account both past and future states not only resolves these issues, but also suggests a new type of quantum entanglement, placing tachyons at the heart of matter formation through excitation of the Higgs field. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
Recent advances in tachyon theory have addressed past contradictions by incorporating both past and future states into the boundary conditions, leading to new quantum entanglement theories and suggesting a key role for tachyons in the formation of matter.
Tachyons are hypothetical particles that travel faster than the speed of light. These faster-than-light particles are the “enfants terribles” of modern physics. Until recently, they were commonly thought to be entities that did not fit into the special theory of relativity. However, a recently published paper has shown that University of Warsaw University of Oxford Many of these prejudices have been shown to be unfounded: tachyons are not only eliminated by the theory, but also allow us to better understand its causal structure.
Faster-than-light motion and tachyons
Motion faster than the speed of light is one of the most contentious problems in physics. Hypothetical particles capable of traveling faster than the speed of light, called tachyons (from the Greek tachýs, fast, swift), are the “children of enmity” of modern physics. Until recently, tachyons were widely thought to be an exception to the special theory of relativity.
Challenging the Tachyon Theory in Quantum Mechanics
It has been known so far that tachyons do not exist in quantum theory for at least three reasons: first, the ground state of the tachyon field is thought to be unstable, so such faster-than-light particles would form an “avalanche”. Second, when the inertial observer changes, the number of particles observed in that reference system should also change, but the presence of, say, seven particles does not depend on who is observing. Third, faster-than-light particles can have negative energies.
However, the authors – Jerzy Paczos, a PhD candidate at Stockholm University, Katzper Dempski, who is finishing his PhD at the Physics Department, Szymon Cedrowski, a final year Physics (English) student, and four more experienced researchers – Szymon Czarzynski, Krzysztof Turzynski and Andrzej Dragan (all at the Physics Department at the University of Warsaw) and Artur Eckert from the University of Oxford – point out that the difficulties with tachyons so far have a common cause.
It turns out that the “boundary conditions” that determine the course of physical processes include not only the initial state of a system but also its final state. The results of an international research team have just been published in a prestigious academic journal. Physics Review D.
A Breakthrough in Understanding Tachyons
Simply put, to calculate the probability of a quantum process involving tachyons, one needs to know not only its past initial state, but also its future final state. Once this fact was incorporated into the theory, all the aforementioned difficulties completely disappeared and the tachyon theory became mathematically consistent. “It’s a bit like Internet advertising: one simple trick solves the problem,” says Andrzej Dragun, the lead inventor of the entire research effort.
“The idea that the future influences the present, rather than the present determining the future, is not new in physics. However, until now this kind of view was at best an unorthodox interpretation of certain quantum phenomena, and this time we were forced to this conclusion by the theory itself: we had to expand the state space to ‘make room’ for tachyons,” Dragan concludes.
The Significance and Future of Tachyon Research
The authors also predict that the expanded boundary conditions will have consequences: a new kind of quantum entanglement, one that mixes the past and the future, will appear in the theory, not present in conventional particle theory. The paper also raises the question of whether tachyons described in this way are purely a “mathematical possibility” or whether such particles might one day be observed.
According to the authors, tachyons are not just a possibility, but are in fact an essential component of the spontaneous destruction process responsible for the formation of matter. This hypothesis implies that excitations of the Higgs field before the spontaneous symmetry breaking could travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum.
Reference: “Covariant quantum field theory of tachyons” by Jerzy Paczos, Kacper Dębski, Szymon Cedrowski, Szymon Charzyński, Krzysztof Turzyński, Artur Ekert, Andrzej Dragan, July 9, 2024; Physics Review D.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.110.015006
