Searching for Tachyons (continued)

Gravity and Superstrings

In the final portion of the chapter on tachyons, Tiwari writes: "Recent advances in tachyon physics (in the theoretical domain) originate in quantum electrodynamics in the presence of gravity, and tachyons in superstring theories. Faster-than-light photon propagation due to vacuum polarization effects in a background gravitational field was discovered by Drummond and Hathrell in 1980 [Citation: Physical Review D, #22, page 343.]. On the other hand tachyons have been known to arise from early times in bosonic
strings -- both closed and open; their importance in recent years has been due to the developments in the brane theory and non-perturbative techniques in string theory."

He then explains superluminal photons (based on the given citation), noting that the framework that results from combining Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) and STR "has been very successful" at explaining the electromagnetic interactions...

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Searching for Tachyons (continued)

Tiwari On The Experiments

Under the sub-heading "Experimental Searches", Tiwari starts the topic by mentioning a few seemingly serious attempts to detect tachyons, noting that: "The first experimental investigation by T. Alvager and P. Erman was based on the suggestion that tachyons might be present in beta decay. Presence of a charged tachyon in a strong radioactive beta source was searched during the years 1963-65, but in vain." His citation is a 1969 article in Physics Today magazine, in which Bilaniuk and Sudarshan discuss these series of experiments. [See: Physics Today, 22(5) (1969).]

However, I found more details in an obscure archived paper* by Sudarshan, in which it is stated: "The simplest method of identification of a tachyon is to measure its energy and momentum and verify that the momentum is larger than the energy; equivalently one may measure the velocity directly by a time of flight method. The first method...

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Searching for Tachyons (continued)

Objections to Tachyons

Dr. Tiwari cites the two main objections to tachyons in discussions published in Physics Today magazine in 1969. First, there was the contention that the notion of imaginary mass for tachyons raises questions about how the General Theory of Relativity (GTR) can be applied to them, so as to gain an adequate understanding of the role that inertia and gravitational mass play in tachyonic frames of reference. That is, the assumption was that only detectable changes in energy and momentum would be observable for tachyons, and the notion of the tachyon will therefore remain a mere theoretical curiosity as long as we do not know anything about how tachyons interact with ordinary matter and gravity. Secondly, there was the contention that the mere existence of tachyons would violate the "principle" of causality; assuming, of course, that it is impossible to violate this principle in any way, and therefore that tachyons do not...

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Searching for Tachyons

Verification/nullification of my thesis on tachyonic gravity depends on the repeatable experimental detection of tachyons, in a manner that proves beyond doubt that they exist, and thereafter on the development of experiments that reveal tachyon characteristics.

To figure out experimental apparatus that might absolutely prove/disprove the existence of tachyons, therefore, I have been studying (for the past three decades) means by which searches for tachyons have been carried out. One good source for an overview of such efforts is the book Superluminal Phenomena In Modern Perspective, by Suresh C. Tiwari (Institute of Natural Philosophy, Varanasi, India), from Rinton Press (published in 2003), and I would like to post here information from the book, and from the review I published of it (online) a few years ago (but now with updated comments, and some extra research).
The point is to list and elaborate ways tachyons could be proven to exist.

The book itself...

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Applications for the Tachyonics Operator

Tachyonics is the study of tachyons, of which there are three areas holding promise of significant advancements in technology. These are
(1) theoretical physics,
(2) interdiscipline philosophy, and
(3) metaphysics.

In theoretical physics, it can be shown that quantum gravity obtains an explanation consistent with empirical data from gravity-related laboratory experiments and from numerous astronomical observations by suggesting that the quanta of gravity are special tachyons, represented using the Tachyonics Operator (the "imagination-unit").

See also my message-board on Yahoo, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheTEPG.

This understanding allows us to unify General Relativity with Quantum Mechanics in a Grand Unified Field Theory, incorporating gravity with the other fields of force in a relativistic gauge-field format (a preferred experimental...

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