{"paper":{"title":"The Problem of Motion: The Statistical Mechanics of Zitterbewegung","license":"http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["hep-th"],"primary_cat":"quant-ph","authors_text":"Kevin H. Knuth","submitted_at":"2014-11-07T08:28:32Z","abstract_excerpt":"Around 1930, both Gregory Breit and Erwin Schroedinger showed that the eigenvalues of the velocity of a particle described by wavepacket solutions to the Dirac equation are simply $\\pm$c, the speed of light. This led Schroedinger to coin the term Zitterbewegung, which is German for \"trembling motion\", where all particles of matter (fermions) zig-zag back-and-forth at only the speed of light. The result is that any finite speed less than $c$, including the state of rest, only makes sense as a long-term average that can be thought of as a drift velocity. In this paper, we seriously consider this"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"1411.1854","kind":"arxiv","version":2},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}