Physics – General Physics
Scientific paper
2004-04-08
Physics
General Physics
14 pages, 2 figures. Comments welcome
Scientific paper
In the wave-particle duality, a free particle can be considered as a wave packet. Is there a wave property that corresponds to the rest mass of the particle? This is an interesting question that has not been extensively explored before. We suggest that this problem may be approached by treating the rest mass on the same footing as energy and momentum. Here we demonstrate that, by assuming that the matter wave of a particle behaves like a photon, one could derive the mass-energy relation from the solution of a simplified wave equation. This solution suggests that the rest mass of a particle is associated with a "transverse wave number", which characterizes the radial variation of the wave function in the transverse plane. This finding has several appealing features. For example, it shows a consistent geometrical relationship between mass, energy and momentum in both the wave and particle perspectives. Also, it predicts that a massless particle must travel at the constant speed of light. Furthermore, from a philosophical point of view, this model suggests that the mass-energy relation attributed to the special theory of relativity may have a root in the wave-particle duality. Indeed, it is shown that the Klein-Gordon equation can be derived naturally based on this model.
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