Evanescent Waves and Superluminal Behavior of Matter

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that evanescent waves are solutions to a tachyon-like Klein-Gordon equation, revealing superluminal states in tunneling phenomena, with implications for neutrino flavor oscillations and potential superluminal behavior of matter.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical framework linking evanescent waves to tachyon-like solutions, explaining superluminal tunneling and neutrino oscillations.

Findings

Evanescent waves are solutions to a tachyon-like Klein-Gordon equation.

Superluminal states occur during tunneling of ultrarelativistic particles.

Application to neutrinos explains flavor oscillations during free flight.

Abstract

An evanescent wave is a non-propagating wave with an imaginary wave vector. In this study, we prove that these are solutions of the tachyon-like Klein Gordon equation, and that in the tunneling of ultrarelativistic half integer spin particles they describe superluminal states arising from interactions between a particle and barrier. These states decay as a particle emerges from the opposite side of a potential barrier, conserving the same initial energy but not necessarily the same mass. The obtained theory is applied to the neutrino, to explain flavor oscillations during free flight and determine the conditions that maximize the probability of their occurrence.