Macroscopic violation of special relativity

G. Nimtz, A. A. Stahlhofen

Published 2007-08-05Version 1

Feynman one of the founders of Quantum Electronic Dynamics (QED) introduced in his diagrams virtual particles as intermediate states of an interaction process. Such virtual particles are not observable, however, from the theoretical point of view they represent necessary intermediate states between observable real states. Such virtual particles were introduced for describing the interaction process between an electron and a positron and for much more complicated interaction processes. Other candidates for virtual photons are evanescent modes known from optics. Evanescent modes have a purely imaginary wave number, they represent the mathematical analogy of the tunneling solutions of the Schr\"odinger equation. Evanescent modes are present in the optical processes of total reflection and in undersized wave guides for instance. The most prominent example of the occurrence of evanescent modes is frustrated total internal reflection at double prisms. In 1949 Sommerfeld \cite{Sommerfeld} pointed out that this optical phenomenon represents the analogy of quantum mechanical tunneling. The evanescent modes and tunneling violate the theory of special relativity, obviously, they represent the exception which proves the special theory of relativity. We demonstrate the quantum mechanical behavior of evanescent modes \textbf{with digital microwave} signals at a macroscopic scale of the order of a meter and show that evanescent modes are well described by virtual photons as predicted by former QED calculations.