Published June 10, 2016 | Version v1
Journal article

Observable Zitterbewegung in curved spacetimes

  • 1. ARC Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale, School of Physics, The University of Sydney, NSW 2006 (Australia)
  • 2. Department of Physics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 64, 00014 Helsinki (Finland)

Description

Zitterbewegung, as it was originally described by Schrödinger, is an unphysical, non-observable effect. We verify whether the effect can be observed in non-inertial reference frames/curved spacetimes, where the ambiguity in defining particle states results in a mixing of positive and negative frequency modes. We explicitly demonstrate that such a mixing is in fact necessary to obtain the correct classical value for a particle's velocity in a uniformly accelerated reference frame, whereas in cosmological spacetime a particle does indeed exhibit Zitterbewegung.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2016.03.049

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1016/j.physletb.2016.03.049;
arXiv
arXiv:1508.06322v2;
PII
S0370-2693(16)30020-X;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physics Letters. Section B
Journal Volume
757
Journal Page Range
p. 84-91
ISSN
0370-2693
CODEN
PYLBAJ

INIS

Country of Publication
Netherlands
Country of Input or Organization
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
INIS RN
48011695
Subject category
S71: CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS;
Descriptors DEI
COSMOLOGY; PARTICLES; SPACE-TIME; VELOCITY; ZITTERBEWEGUNG

Optional Information

Copyright
Copyright (c) 2016 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.