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Quantum Physics

arXiv:1411.1854 (quant-ph)
[Submitted on 7 Nov 2014 (v1), last revised 19 Dec 2014 (this version, v2)]

Title:The Problem of Motion: The Statistical Mechanics of Zitterbewegung

Authors:Kevin H. Knuth
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Abstract:Around 1930, both Gregory Breit and Erwin Schroedinger showed that the eigenvalues of the velocity of a particle described by wavepacket solutions to the Dirac equation are simply $\pm$c, the speed of light. This led Schroedinger to coin the term Zitterbewegung, which is German for "trembling motion", where all particles of matter (fermions) zig-zag back-and-forth at only the speed of light. The result is that any finite speed less than $c$, including the state of rest, only makes sense as a long-term average that can be thought of as a drift velocity. In this paper, we seriously consider this idea that the observed velocities of particles are time-averages of motion at the speed of light and demonstrate how the relativistic velocity addition rule in one spatial dimension is readily derived by considering the probabilities that a particle is observed to move either to the left or to the right at the speed of light.
Comments: Knuth K.H. 2014. The problem of motion: the statistical mechanics of Zitterbewegung. Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering, Amboise, France, Sept 2014, AIP Conference Proceedings, American Institute of Physics, Melville NY
Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th)
Cite as: arXiv:1411.1854 [quant-ph]
  (or arXiv:1411.1854v2 [quant-ph] for this version)
  https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1411.1854
Related DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4906026

Submission history

From: Kevin H. Knuth [view email]
[v1] Fri, 7 Nov 2014 08:28:32 UTC (262 KB)
[v2] Fri, 19 Dec 2014 03:44:13 UTC (337 KB)
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