Breaking the Barrier: A New Quantum Field Theory for Tachyons
Breaking the Barrier: A New Quantum Field Theory for Tachyons
By Robert Lankester,
For decades, tachyons—hypothetical particles that travel faster than light—have lived at the edges of scientific respectability. They’ve been dismissed as mathematical oddities or relegated to the realm of science fiction, their theoretical existence plagued by deep inconsistencies with the framework of modern physics. But now, a team of physicists from institutions across Europe and Asia has made a breakthrough that should fundamentally change how we think about tachyons—and perhaps even time itself.
In a new paper published in Physical Review D, physicists Jerzy Paczos, Kacper Dębski, Szymon Cedrowski, Szymon Charzyński, Krzysztof Turzyński, Artur Ekert, and Andrzej Dragan have developed the first fully covariant quantum field theory of tachyons. This new framework overcomes the three fatal flaws that have historically undermined attempts to include tachyons in the standard quantum field theory: an energy spectrum unbounded from below, an unstable and frame-dependent vacuum, and Lorentz non-invariance of the theory’s fundamental commutation relations.
A New Space for an Old Problem
“The core issue,” says lead author Andrzej Dragan of the University of Warsaw and the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore, “wasn’t the tachyons themselves—it was how we represented them in the quantum formalism.” Traditional attempts to quantize tachyonic fields used the standard Fock space, which works well for particles like electrons or photons. But tachyons are fundamentally different: they move along spacelike trajectories, and their energy-momentum vectors behave strangely under Lorentz boosts—the transformations that connect observers in relative motion.
To preserve Lorentz invariance, the authors extended the Hilbert space of the theory to what they call the “twin space”—the tensor product of the standard Fock space and its dual, written as ? ⊗ ?*. This twin space allows the theory to handle both “input” and “output” quantum states simultaneously, a necessity for dealing with tachyons whose direction of motion through time can flip depending on the observer's frame.
This innovation not only ensures that the vacuum remains stable under Lorentz transformations but also preserves the crucial mathematical structure of the field—the commutation relations—even in the presence of boosts that reverse energy sign.
The Return of the Two-State Formalism
Perhaps most striking is the paper’s connection to a once-esoteric interpretation of quantum mechanics known as the two-state vector formalism, introduced in the 1960s by Yakir Aharonov and colleagues. In this interpretation, quantum systems are described not just by a wavefunction evolving from past to future, but by a pair of states—one evolving forward from the past and another evolving backward from the future.
This time-symmetric picture has long intrigued philosophers and physicists but was considered optional in standard quantum mechanics. In the new tachyon theory, however, it becomes necessary. The twin space structure demands it: the two parts of the tensor product correspond directly to preselected and post selected quantum states, akin to the “in” and “out” states in particle scattering. This lends the two-state vector formalism a newfound physical footing—not as an interpretation, but as a built-in feature of a consistent relativistic quantum theory.
Beyond Speculation
While this pioneering work does not yet answer every question, it undeniably opens a gateway to a higher understanding. Earlier propositions that tachyons are neg-entropic—meaning they may reverse entropy and restore order—remain a tantalizing frontier further exploration. And yet, with this bold advancement, the twin-space formulation offers, for the first time in modern physics, a consistent, Lorentz-invariant, and stable theoretical framework for tachyons—an achievement that has eluded the scientific world for more than five decades.
The implications of this breakthrough are profound. From a multidimensional perspective, the potential applications in the realms of holographic healing and near-entropy quantum rejuvenation are no longer distant visions—they are quietly arriving, poised to manifest. In theory, the energetic scaffolding is already in place.
What was once dismissed as impossible, then reframed as improbable, has now become the emergent reality. And in this sacred moment of unfolding, we stand on the precipice of tomorrow’s transformation—a restructuring of the energetic continuum of life itself. In this light, we are invited not merely to observe, but to participate in a conscious evolution of both science and Spirit.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Iwo Białynicki-Birula and Piotr Chankowski for valuable discussions. Andrzej Dragan thanks Paweł Jakubczyk for "irritatingly useful" comments and Krzysztof Turzyński for encouragement. Kacper Dębski is financially supported by the Polish National Science Center Grant No. 2021/41/N/ST2/01901.
References available in Physical Review D, Vol. 110, 015006 (2024).