Against dogma: On superluminal propagation in classical electromagnetism

作者：Weatherall James Owen^*

来源：Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics , 2014, 48: 109-123.

DOI：10.1016/j.shpsb.2014.08.005

• Electromagnetism
• Superluminal propagation
• Special relativity
• Gordon metric

It is deeply entrenched dogma that relativity theory prohibits superluminal propagation. It is also experimentally well-established that under some circumstances, classical electromagnetic fields propagate through a dielectric medium with superluminal group velocities and superluminal phase velocities. But it is usually claimed that these superluminal velocities do not violate the relativistic prohibition. Here I analyze electromagnetic fields in a dielectric medium within a framework for understanding superluminal propagation recently developed by Geroch (1996, 2011) and elaborated by Earman (2014). I will argue that for some parameter values, electromagnetic fields do propagate superluminally in the Geroch-Earman sense.

• 出版日期2014-11