FTL Quantum Models of the Photon and the Electron
Richard F. Gauthier
Abstract and summary · read the original at the source · none found
In one page
Richard Gauthier takes a question most people never think to ask — what is a photon actually doing, and what is an electron actually made of? — and answers it with a shape. In his model a photon is a single uncharged quantum running along an open corkscrew at 1.414 times the speed of light, the corkscrew’s radius set by the wavelength. An electron is the same thing closed into a loop: a charged pointlike quantum circling roughly 250 billion billion times a second around a double-looped helix whose pitch is one Compton wavelength. Because that quantum carries energy and momentum but no rest mass of its own, nothing forbids it from going faster than light, and in Gauthier’s geometry it does so 57 percent of the time and travels slower the rest, passing through exactly the speed of light twice in every cycle. The trajectory’s parameters are chosen so that the loop reproduces the electron’s measured spin and magnetic moment, and its two handednesses give the electron and the positron.
Why it matters hereChapter 2 asks what the vacuum and the particles moving through it actually are, and this is a concrete geometric answer — matter as light tied into a closed loop. Chapter 13 is where the site keeps the attempts at one picture underneath energy, inertia and travel, and Gauthier’s is unusual in tying the electron’s inertia to a momentum that never stops circulating.
What it claims
01The photon is modelled as an uncharged superluminal quantum moving at 1.414 times the speed of light along an open helical trajectory inclined at 45 degrees, with a helix radius equal to the wavelength divided by two pi — so the helical pitch of the corkscrew is the wavelength itself.Abstract, first sentence
What to watch02The electron is modelled as a charged pointlike quantum circulating at about 2.5 times 10 to the 20 hertz in a closed, double-looped helical trajectory whose helical pitch is one Compton wavelength, Planck’s constant divided by the electron mass times the speed of light.Abstract, second sentence
What to watch03The move that makes the speed permissible is stated plainly: the circulating quantum has energy and momentum but no rest mass, so its speed is not limited by the speed of light. In the electron’s rest frame it runs superluminal 57 percent of the time and subluminal 43 percent, passing through exactly the speed of light twice in each cycle, with a maximum of 2.515 times the speed of light and a minimum of 0.707 times it.Abstract, third to fifth sentences
What to watch04The model is pinned to measured quantities rather than left free: the helical trajectory parameters are selected to produce the electron’s spin of one half h-bar, its magnetic moment to the Bohr magneton without the small quantum-electrodynamic corrections, and the Dirac equation’s jittery motion — the Zitterbewegung — at its standard angular frequency of twice the rest energy over h-bar, its amplitude of half a reduced Compton wavelength, and its internal speed of exactly the speed of light.Abstract, sixth sentence
Designed, not yet built05The two possible helicities of the model correspond to the electron and the positron, and the unifying statement of the paper follows: with these models, an electron is like a closed circulating photon. Matter, in this picture, is light that has been tied into a loop.Abstract, seventh and eighth sentences
Designed, not yet built06The proposal Gauthier attaches to it is about inertia: the electron’s inertia is related to the circulating internal Compton momentum of the model, which he calls momentum at rest — mass as motion that has been closed on itself rather than as a substance. What to watch is the payoff he names in the last sentence: the internal superluminality of the photon model, the mixed superluminality and subluminality of the electron model, and that account of inertia could be relevant to mechanisms of superluminal communication and transportation. The measurement that would open the question is any experiment sensitive to structure inside the electron at the Compton scale.Abstract, ninth and closing sentences
What to watch
Read it · abstract
Abstract
A photon is modeled by an uncharged superluminal quantum moving at 1.414c along an open 45‐degree helical trajectory with radius R = λ/2π (where λ is the helical pitch or wavelength). A mostly superluminal spatial model of an electron is composed of a charged pointlike quantum circulating at an extremely high frequency (2.5 × 10²⁰ hz) in a closed, double‐looped hehcal trajectory whose helical pitch is one Compton wavelength h/mc. The quantum has energy and momentum but not rest mass, so its speed is not limited by c. sThe quantum’s speed is superluminal 57% of the time and subluminal 43% of the time, passing through c twice in each trajectory cycle. The quantum’s maximum speed in the electron’s rest frame is 2.515c and its minimum speed is .707c. The electron model’s helical trajectory parameters are selected to produce the electron’s spin ℏ/2 and approximate (without small QED corrections) magnetic moment eℏ/2m (the Bohr magneton μB) as well as its Dirac equation‐related “jittery motion” angular frequency 2mc²/ℏ, amplitude ℏ/2mc and internal speed c. The two possible helicities of the electron model correspond to the electron and the positron. With these models, an electron is like a closed circulating photon. The electron’s inertia is proposed to be related to the electron model’s circulating internal Compton momentum mc. The internal superluminalily of the photon model, the internal superluminahty/subluminality of the electron model, and the proposed approach to the electron’s inertia as “momentum at rest” within the electron, could be relevant to possible mechanisms of superluminal communication and transportation.
Richard F. Gauthier, FTL Quantum Models of the Photon and the Electron, AIP Conference Proceedings 880, pages 1099 to 1108, 2007, in the proceedings of the Space Technology and Applications International Forum, STAIF 2007, Albuquerque, New Mexico. The published paper is at doi.org/10.1063/1.2437555.
(Abstract only, and the full paper was not reachable — see the rights note above.)
On this site, the Zitterbewegung that Gauthier’s loop is built to reproduce is used by Puthoff to derive gravity as a zero-point-fluctuation force at /library/stm-1ec4832b74, and the zero-point-field account of where inertia comes from — a different answer to the same question Gauthier is asking — is at /library/stm-0b5eaf66a8, /library/stm-2665acff98 and /library/stm-9409ed6eff. The faster-than-light question he ends on is taken up at /library/stm-84308e5bbe and /library/stm-3ba8eff532.
The way in
https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2437555SOURCE NOT REACHED IN FULL. The paper is held closed by AIP as AIP Conference Proceedings volume 880, pages 1099 to 1108, in the proceedings of the Space Technology and Applications International Forum, STAIF 2007, Albuquerque. On 2026-09-08 no open copy was found: OpenAlex, Unpaywall and Semantic Scholar all report open access status closed with no repository location, Crossref carries no licence statement of any kind, the author’s own domain did not resolve and has no captures in the Wayback index, and a viXra author listing refused the request. The status was raised from summary-only to abstract-only because the author’s own complete abstract is carried by the AIP deposit; that abstract is reproduced below and the summary and every claim are written from it, which is why each locator says Abstract. TEXT FIDELITY. The deposited abstract flattened its exponents (2.5 x 1020 hz for 2.5 times 10 to the 20 hertz, and 2mc2 for twice the rest energy); those two exponents are restored here so the numbers read correctly, and nothing else is altered. The deposit also carries four typographic corruptions of its own — hehcal for helical, sThe for The, superluminalily and superluminahty for superluminality — which are left exactly as the publisher has them rather than silently corrected. AUTHOR. Richard F. Gauthier; no affiliation is asserted here because no publisher record consulted gives one.
How to cite it
Richard F. Gauthier (2007) FTL Quantum Models of the Photon and the Electron. doi:10.1063/1.2437555
Where it sits in the curriculum