English

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