English

Is it possible for a superluminal signal velocity without violating causality?

Optics 2008-10-21 v1 Classical Physics

Abstract

We present a model for a vacuum-like effective medium composed of the absorbing and gain media under the special designed parameters. Within the linear response theory, we prove that any pulse signal (with or without a discontinuity) through such a kind of vacuum-like effective media is always equal to the light speed in vacuum () without any distortion. As well known that the group velocity in anomalous or normal dispersive media may be smaller or larger than, or even become negative, but the discontinuous point always propagates at the velocity . Therefore we present some discussions on different definitions of the signals, based on the light pulses with a well-defined shape or with a sudden change, for trying to understand two possibilities for the signal velocity without violating the causality.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0810.3370,
  title  = {Is it possible for a superluminal signal velocity without violating causality?},
  author = {Li-Gang Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.3370},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

11 pages, 3 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T11:32:28.613Z