Supersonic and Superluminal Energy and Speed of Information via Temporal Interference in a Dispersionless Environment

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through simulations that acoustic wave packets can exhibit superluminal peak speeds due to temporal interference effects in a dispersionless medium, but the information speed remains subluminal, preserving causality.

Contribution

It introduces a novel interference-based mechanism causing superluminal peak speeds without violating relativity, distinct from known superluminal phenomena.

Findings

Peak-to-peak wave speeds can be supersonic due to interference.

Information speed remains less than the speed of light.

The effect is distinct from quantum tunneling and anomalous dispersion.

Abstract

Numerical implementation of a theory yields acoustic wave packets whose peak-to-peak speeds, $c_{3d}$, are supersonic in a dispersionless medium due to temporal interference between direct and boundary-reflected paths. The effect occurs when the source and receiver are near each other and at least one is within $c\tilde{\delta t}/2$ of the boundary, where $c$ is the phase speed of propagation in the medium, and $\tilde{\delta t}$ is the smallest temporal separation between the paths at which interference first occurs. This direct+reflected path effect is distinct from previously-observed superluminal phenomena and theories including quantum tunneling, cavity vacuum fluctuations, and group speeds due to anomalous dispersion. For temporally interfering direct+reflected paths, simulations yield a speed of information less than $c$. The speed of information from the interfering paths can exceed the speed derived from propagation only along the direct path. We conjecture these results will also hold for electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation. If so, we prove the speed of information is less than or equal to the speed of light in a vacuum, so the effect does not violate special relativity. These theoretical and simulation results, as well as their conjectured EM extension, should be readily accessible to experimental verification.