Nonlocal Transmission of Information and the Principle of Causality

Abstract

The quantum mechanical tunneling effect was theoretically described in the first half of the last century, which witnessed the rise of quantum theory and groundbreaking experimental results in nuclear physics. A similar tunneling effect also takes place in the case of EM waves. The wave account (in the case of evanescent waves), the quantum-mechanical formalism, as well as the electrodynamical one, revealed a phenomenon that is counterintuitive and possibly even inconsistent with the special relativity theory paradigm. In the quantum formalism, the time of wave propagation within a photonic barrier is expressed as an imaginary number, which can be interpreted as the zero speed of propagation. In the nineties, scientists offered further experimental proofs of the theory; in experimental systems constructed for testing EM-waves tunneling, superluminal speed of propagation has been recorded. In the article, I introduce the problem of photon tunneling in the experimental context of the possibility of nonlocal wave propagation and superluminal transmission of information.