Related papers: Observation of subluminal twisted light in vacuum
In Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, all observers measure the speed of light, $c$, to be the same. However, this refers to the round trip speed, where a clock at the origin times the outward and return trip of light reflecting off a…
Transformation rules for coordinates, velocities and accelerations in accelerated reference frames are derived. A generalized approach of the special relativity is taken for a basis. A 7-dimensional space including projections of velocity…
Light experiences drag effects when it propagates through a moving medium. The study of light drag has provided foundational insights into light-matter interactions. While longitudinal drag has been extensively characterized, transverse…
Anomalous dispersion cannot occur in a transparent passive medium where electromagnetic radiation is being absorbed at all frequencies, as pointed out by Landau and Lifshitz. Here we show, both theoretically and experimentally, that…
A recent proposal to explore vacuum electrodynamics using the speed of propagation of an electromagnetic pulse through an ambient constant magnetic field is examined. It is argued that the proposal should be modified so that the background…
New varying speed of light (VSL) theories as alternatives to the inflationary model of the universe are discussed and evidence for a varying speed of light reviewed. Work linked with VSL but primarily concerned with deriving Planck's black…
Slow light in moving media reaches a paradoxical regime when the flow speed of the medium approaches the group velocity of light. Pulses can penetrate a region where a counter-propagating flow exceeds the group velocity. When the…
The mechanisms leading to a seemingly superluminal propagation of light in dispersive media are examined. The anomalous dispersion near an absorption line, involved in the first experiments displaying negative group velocity propagation, is…
All experiments attempting to verify the invariance of speed of light directly are based on two-way speed measurement. The challenge in one-way speed measurement, the requirement of spatially separated synchronised clocks, can be possibly…
Particle-antiparticle pairs are predicted by quantum field theory to appear as vacuum fluctuations. The model of the vacuum used here is postulated to have the following properties: To minimize the violation of conservation energy allowed…
We present a simple thought experiment in which a beam of light of a finite length (a light-pulse) enters a detection device that consists of a wave detector and a light bulb. We examine the experiment from the reference frame where the…
The nature of light, the existence of magnetism, the physical meaning of a vacuum are problems so deeply related to philosophy that they have been discussed for thousands of years. In this paper, we concentrate ourselves on a question that…
In relativity and quantum field theory, the vacuum speed of light is assumed to be constant; the range of validity of general relativity is determined by the Planck length. However, there has been no convincing theory explaining the…
Einstein's relativity theory appears to be very accurate, but at times equally puzzling. On the one hand, electromagnetic radiation must have zero rest mass in order to propagate at the speed of light, but on the other hand, since it…
Although special relativity limits the actual velocity of a particle to $c$, the velocity of light, the observed velocity need not be the same as the actual velocity as the observer is only aware of the position of a particle at the time in…
Light-pulse atom interferometers serve as tools for high-precision metrology and are targeting measurements of relativistic effects. This development is facilitated by extended interrogation times and large-momentum-transfer techniques…
Method given for intuitively visualizing constancy of light speed. Using mass-energy equivalence, we can show with the help of simple thought experiments, that velocity time dilation and gravitational time dilation are a necessary…
We propose a revised formulation of General Relativity for cosmological settings, in which the Einstein constant varies with the energy density of the Universe. We demonstrate that this modification has only phenomenological impact of…
An explanation for superluminal phenomena based on wave-particle duality of photons is suggested. A single photon may be regarded as a wave packet, whose spatial extension is its coherence volume. As a photon propagates as a wave train in…
Within an axiomatic framework of kinematics, we prove that the existence of faster than light particles is logically independent of Einstein's special theory of relativity. Consequently, it is consistent with the kinematics of special…