Zitterbewegung and the Charge of an Electron

Abstract

Dirac's Relativistic Wave Equation implies a measured electron velocity of $\pm c$ in any direction, in contradiction to Special Relativity and observation. It is shown in this article that this anomalous electron velocity reveals an internal structure of the electron whereby the mass and the charge of the electron cannot be described by the same position operator. The measured velocity of electron mass is always less than $c$ in any direction but charge can be displaced at the speed of light. This speed is realizable only when the electron is in a state that is a superposition of positive and negative energy states, also known as a zitterbewegung state. It is shown that in zitterbewegung it is the charge and not the mass that undergoes rapid spatial oscillation, and that there are measurable consequences of this charge zitterbewegung. Zitterbewegung of charge also occurs in an entangled electron-positron pair created by a strong electric field.

References in corpus (8)

• Dirac Equation and Quantum Relativistic Effects in a Single Trapped Ion
• Zitterbewegung of electronic wave packets in semiconductor nanostructures
• Position and spin in relativistic quantum mechanics
• Zitterbewegung by Quantum Field Theory Considerations
• Photon wave function and zitterbewegung
• Zitterbewegung and Klein-tunneling phenomena for transient quantum waves
• Nanospintronics meets relativistic quantum physics: Ubiquity of Zitterbewegung effects
• The Localized Quantum Vacuum Field