Physicists from the University of Warsaw and the University of Oxford proved that hypothetical particles, called tachyons, are ruled by the special theory of relativity. Results of their research have been published in “Physical Review D”.

Tachyons are hypothetical particles that travel at speeds greater that the speed of light. These superluminal particles are perceived as the “enfant terrible” of physics. Until recently, they were generally regarded as entities that did not fit into the special theory of relativity. However, a paper just published in Physical Review D by physicists from the University of Warsaw and the University of Oxford has shown that many of these prejudices were unfounded. Tachyons are not only not ruled out by the theory, but allow us to better understand its causal structure.

The authors of this crucial finding are Prof. Andrzej Dragan, Prof. Krzysztof Turzyński, and Dr Szymon Charzyński from the Faculty of Physics of the University of Warsaw, Prof. Artur Ekert from the Mathematical Institute of the University of Oxford, Jerzy Paczos, a doctoral candidate from the Department of Physics of Stockholm University, Kacper Dębski, a doctoral candidate from the UW Faculty of Physics, and Szymon Cedrowski, a student from the UW Faculty of Physics.

The researchers found out that the difficulties with tachyons so far share a common cause. It turned out that the “boundary conditions” that determine the course of physical processes include not only the initial state but also the final state of the system.

“The idea that the future can influence the present instead of the present determining the future is not new in physics. However, until now, this type of view has at best been an unorthodox interpretation of certain quantum phenomena, and this time we were forced to this conclusion by the theory itself. To ‘make room’ for tachyons we had to expand the state space,” Prof. Andrzej Dragan said.

More details about the findings are available at www.fuw.edu.pl.