Faster-than-c Signals, Special Relativity, and Causality

By Stefano Liberati, S. Sonego, Matt Visser. 2001

146 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Motivated by the recent attention on superluminal phenomena, we investigate the compatibility between faster-than-c propagation and the fundamental principles of relativity and causality. We first argue that special relativity can easily accommodate—indeed, does not exclude—faster-than-c signaling at the kinematical level. As far as causality is concerned, it is impossible to make statements of general validity, without specifying at least some features of the tachyonic propagation. We thus focus on the Scharnhorst effect (faster-than-c photon propagation in the Casimir vacuum), which is perhaps the most plausible candidate for a physically sound realization of these phenomena. We demonstrate that in this case the faster-than-c aspects are “benign” and constrained in such a manner as to not automatically lead to causality violations.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0c79f2b4630ac5e054ad7f801773b082bb522064

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

1. Stefano Liberati
2. Matt Visser
3. C. Barceló
4. Grigory E. Volovik
5. Thanu Padmanabhan
6. D. Mattingly
7. Francisco S. N. Lobo
8. T.Padmanabhan

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

1. Stefano Liberati
2. Grigory E. Volovik
3. Matt Visser
4. C. Barceló
5. D. Mattingly
6. T. Sotiriou
7. Giovanni Amelino-Camelia
8. Francisco S. N. Lobo

Citations in the corpus

• Tests of Lorentz invariance: a 2013 update (2013, background): “Note that we have not proved at all that signals cannot move faster than C! In principle, these particles/signal are not incompatible with Lorentz transformations and they do not a priori lead to causality violations [28].”
• Analogue Gravity (2005, background): “• The discussion of, and argument for, a possible reassessment of fundamental features of quantum physics and general relativity [6, 152, 206, 226, 241, 297, 328, 335].”
• The Universe in a Helium Droplet (2003, methodology): “and define distances by an acoustic radar procedure (Liberati et al. 2002).”