Covariant quantum field theory of tachyons is unphysical

TL;DR

This paper critically examines proposed quantum field theories of tachyons, demonstrating their unphysical nature due to violations of fundamental quantum principles and unitarity, and clarifies limitations in applying standard formalisms to tachyons.

Contribution

It shows that existing tachyon quantum field theories are not truly quantum and highlights the failure of the LSZ formalism in the tachyon context.

Findings

Tachyon field commutes at all points, violating quantum commutation relations.

Dhar-Sudarshan's Feynman propagator formula violates unitarity.

LSZ formalism cannot be straightforwardly applied to tachyons.

Abstract

Tachyons have fascinated generations of physicists due to their peculiar behavior, but they did not solve any real physical problem. This may have changed with the recent works of Dragan et al., who have shown that superluminal observers may be related to the foundations of quantum mechanics (QM) because they require introducing non-determinism and wave-like behavior at the fundamental level. Unfortunately, we show that the tachyon quantum field theory proposed as a part of this program is not quantum since the tachyon field commutes at all points and the canonical commutations relations of a quantum scalar field are not satisfied. We also discuss other authors' theories, e.g., we show that the Dhar-Sudarshan's formula for the Feynman propagator violates unitarity, and we apply the LSZ formalism to tachyons for the first time, where we find that one cannot prove the LSZ asymptotic condition just by replacing plane waves with wavepackets.