Weatherall, James Owen (2014) Against Dogma: On Superluminal Propagation in Classical Electromagnetism. [Preprint]
 | There is a more recent version of this item available. |
![[img]](https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png)
|
PDF
Superluminal_Propagation.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (464kB) |
Abstract
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.
| Export/Citation: | EndNote | BibTeX | Dublin Core | ASCII/Text Citation (Chicago) | HTML Citation | OpenURL |
| Social Networking: |
| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Creators: |
|
||||||
| Additional Information: | Forthcoming in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics | ||||||
| Keywords: | Electromagnetism; superluminal propagation; special relativity; Gordon metric | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory |
||||||
| Depositing User: | James Owen Weatherall | ||||||
| Date Deposited: | 01 Sep 2014 04:43 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 15 Nov 2014 18:07 | ||||||
| Item ID: | 11001 | ||||||
| Subjects: | Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics Specific Sciences > Physics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory |
||||||
| Date: | 2014 | ||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/11001 |
Available Versions of this Item
- Against Dogma: On Superluminal Propagation in Classical Electromagnetism. (deposited 01 Sep 2014 04:43) [Currently Displayed]
Monthly Views for the past 3 years
Monthly Downloads for the past 3 years
Plum Analytics
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
![[feed]](http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/style/images/feed-icon-32x32.png){kind=icon}