Observable Zitterbewegung in Curved Spacetimes
High Energy Physics - Theory
2016-05-04 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Quantum Physics
Abstract
Zitterbewegung, as it was originally described by Schr\"odinger, 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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1508.06322,
title = {Observable Zitterbewegung in Curved Spacetimes},
author = {Archil Kobakhidze and Adrian Manning and Anca Tureanu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1508.06322},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
16 pages, V2: more general calculations presented, version accepted in Physics Letters B