Re: Electron's zitterbewegung

Dirk Bruere at Neopax wrote:

> Wasn't there some casual speculation once put forward that the reason c is a
> natural speed limit is because in reality everything moves at c, and that
> anything moving <c is actually an illusion caused by ZBW?

If you look at the matrix elements of y_0 y_i (Dirac's alphas) in a
free particle state, you get c. If you interpret alpha as the velocity
operator, this says that its expected value is c.

But y_0 y_i is not a Lorentz vector, rather, the "space/time"
components of a bivector (with the "space/space" components being y_i
y_j eps_ijk) and so, cannot represent the velocity of ponderable
matter. So you aren't really forming matrix elements of particle
velocity. (What are they? A phase velocity of interference between the
positive and negative energy components of a Dirac spinor.)

-drl

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