Explanation of Superluminal Phenomena Based on Wave-Particle Duality and Proposed Optical Experiments

TL;DR

This paper explains superluminal phenomena through wave-particle duality, suggesting tunneling causes faster-than-light travel within quantum constraints, and proposes experiments to test these effects.

Contribution

It offers a novel explanation linking wave-particle duality to superluminal effects and proposes specific optical experiments for validation.

Findings

Superluminal tunneling occurs within coherence length and uncertainty limits.

Superluminal and negative group velocities are reshaping effects, not true superluminal travel.

Proposed experiments aim to empirically test superluminal phenomena.

Abstract

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.