Physicists suggest tachyons can be reconciled with the special theory of relativity

Tachyons are hypothetical particles that travel faster than the speed of light. These faster-than-light particles are the “children of enormity” of modern physics. Until recently, it was commonly believed that tachyons were an entity that did not fit into the special theory of relativity.

However, in one paper Published in Physics Review D Research by physicists from the Universities of Warsaw and Oxford has proven that many of these prejudices are unfounded: tachyons are not only refuted by the theory, but also allow us to better understand its causal structure.

Movement beyond speed speed The speed of light is one of the most controversial questions in physics. A hypothetical particle capable of traveling faster than the speed of light, called a tachyon (from the Greek takios, meaning “swift, swift”), is the “enfant terrible” of modern physics. Until recently, tachyons were widely thought to be an anomalous creation of physics. Special theory of relativity.

There are at least three reasons why tachyons do not exist. Quantum theory So far, only two reasons have been known: first, the ground state of the tachyon field is thought to be unstable, so such faster-than-light particles would form an “avalanche”. Second, it is thought that when the inertial observer changes, the number of particles observed in that reference system also changes, but whether there are, say, seven particles does not depend on who is observing. Third, the energy of faster-than-light particles can be negative.

Meanwhile, a group of researchers including Jerzy Paczos, a PhD candidate at Stockholm University, Katzper Dempski, who is finishing his PhD at the Department of Physics, Szymon Cedrowski, a final year student of Physics (English), and four more experienced researchers, Szymon Czadzinski, Krzysztof Turzynski and Andrzej Dragan (all from the Department of Physics at the University of Warsaw) and Artur Eckert from Oxford University, have pointed 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 the system but also its final state.

Combining the past and the future

In simple terms, to calculate the probability of a quantum process involving tachyons, we need to know not only its past, but also initial state The future final state of tachyons was also revealed. Once this fact was incorporated into the theory, all of the difficulties mentioned above disappeared completely and the tachyon theory became mathematically consistent.

“That’s a bit Internet Advertising“We can solve the problem with just one simple trick,” says Andrzej Dragan, the initiator of the entire research effort.

“The idea that the future influences the present, rather than the present determining the future, PhysicsBut until now this kind of view has at best been an unorthodox interpretation of certain quantum phenomena, and now the theory itself has forced us to this conclusion: “We had to expand the state space to ‘make room’ for tachyons,” Dragan concludes.

The authors also boundary condition As a result, a new kind of quantum entanglement appears in the theory, one that does not exist in conventional particle theory, mixing the past and the future. 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.