In physics, a tachyonic field, or simply tachyon, is a quantum field with an imaginary mass.[1] Although tachyonic particles (particles that move faster than light) are a purely hypothetical concept that violate a number of essential physical principles, at least one field with imaginary mass, the Higgs field, is believed to exist. Under no circumstances do any excitations of tachyonic fields ever propagate faster than light—the presence or absence of a tachyonic (imaginary) mass has no effect on the maximum velocity of signals, and so unlike faster-than-light particles there is no violation of causality.[2] Tachyonic fields play an important role in physics[3][4][5] and are discussed in popular books.[1][6]
The term "tachyon" was coined by Gerald Feinberg in a 1967 paper[7] that studied quantum fields with imaginary mass. Feinberg believed such fields permitted faster than light propagation, but it was soon realized that this was not the case.[2] Instead, the imaginary mass creates an instability: any configuration in which one or more field excitations are tachyonic will spontaneously decay, and the resulting configuration contains no physical tachyons. This process is known as tachyon condensation. A famous example is the condensation of the Higgs boson in the Standard Model of particle physics.
In modern physics, all fundamental particles are regarded as localized excitations of fields. Tachyons are unusual because the instability prevents any such localized excitations from existing. Any localized perturbation, no matter how small, starts an exponentially growing cascade that strongly affects physics everywhere inside the future light cone of the perturbation.[2]
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In physics, a tachyonicfield, or simply tachyon, is a quantum field with an imaginary mass. Although tachyonic particles (particles that move faster...
and that tachyonicfields merely give rise to instabilities, not causality violations. The term tachyonicfield refers to imaginary mass fields rather than...
the mass is not quantized. Rather, the scalar field is; even for tachyonic quantum fields, the field operators at spacelike separated points still commute...
Higgs field is a scalar tachyonicfield – scalar meaning it does not transform under Lorentz transformations, and tachyonic meaning the field (but not...
the mass is not quantized. Rather, the scalar field is; even for tachyonic quantum fields, the field operators at spacelike separated points still commute...
scientists reject the idea that they exist. By contrast, tachyonicfields – quantum fields with imaginary mass – certainly do exist and exhibit superluminal...
if they existed, could be used to communicate backwards in time (see tachyonic antitelephone). Because time travel is considered to be non-physical,...
in a preassigned manner. Some suggested methods avoid the problem of tachyonic motion, but would probably generate a naked singularity at the front of...
backward in time. This hypothetical scenario is sometimes referred to as a tachyonic antitelephone. Quantum-mechanical phenomena such as quantum teleportation...
models), one typically chooses a GSO projection which eliminates the tachyonic ground state of the string and preserves spacetime supersymmetry. F. Gliozzi...
close to other tachyonic solutions with E 2 m 2 {\textstyle {\frac {E^{2}}{m^{2}}}} small and negative. The constant t {\textstyle t} tachyonic geodesic outside...
Besides his invaluable contributions to quantum theory, he worked in other fields of physics, such as the classical theory of electromagnetism. For example...
the earlier construction by Sergio Fubini and Gabriele Veneziano of the tachyonic vertex operator in the dual resonance model. Among other features, the...
anti-religious campaign (1928–1941) Superluminal speeds Tachyonic particle Imaginary mass fields Flight from Eden The Orthodox Messenger, Russian Orthodox...
causality has never been recorded, and would lead to paradoxes such as the tachyonic antitelephone. There are situations in which it may seem that matter,...
Olive and Joël Scherk, he proposed the GSO projection to map out the tachyonic states in the Neveu–Schwarz sector. Gliozzi, Ferdinando; Scherk, Joël;...
in which the bullet is at rest to one in which the fluid is at rest. Tachyonic antitelephone: Einstein's thought experiment about how faster-than-light...
order terms of the perturbative series in terms of the square of the tachyonic gluon mass not included in the standard Wilson Operator Product Expansion...
realize spontaneous symmetry breaking is to introduce a scalar field that has a tachyonic mass parameter, classically, then the classical vacuum is the...
S2CID 119855914. G. A. Benford; D. L. Book & W. A. Newcomb (1970). "The Tachyonic Antitelephone". Physical Review D. 2 (2): 263–265. Bibcode:1970PhRvD....
representations of the (generalized) Poincaré group are the so-called tachyonic representations. Tachyons appear in the spectrum of bosonic strings and...
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