For purchase of this item, please read the instructions

Volume 14: Pages 66-75, 2001

Motions of Classical Charged Tachyons

Mark Davidson

Spectel Research Corporation, 807 Rorke Way, Palo Alto, California 94043 U.S.A.

It is shown by numerical simulation that classical charged tachyons have self‐orbiting helical solutions in a narrow neighborhood of certain discrete values for the velocity when the electromagnetic interaction is described by Feynman‐Wheeler electrodynamics. The force rapidly oscillates between attractive and repulsive as a function of velocity in this neighborhood. Causal electrodynamics is also considered, and in this case it is found that when the force is attractive the tachyon loses energy to radiation. Only certain narrow ranges of velocity give attractive forces, and a geometrical derivation of these special velocities is given. Possible implications of these results for hidden‐variable theories of quantum mechanics are conjectured.

Keywords: tachyon physics, classical electromagnetic theory, hidden‐variable theories of quantum mechanics, stochastic quantum mechanics, radiative reactive force, Lorentz‐Dirac equation, spin, zitterbewegung

Received: September 19, 2000; Published online: December 15, 2008