UC Berkeley

Working strictly within the physics theories of Special and General Relativity, I have produced a series of studies developing a consistent mathematical description of tachyons, using both classical and quantum frameworks for particles and fields. The most important choices throughout this work concern the question of which habits from the study of ordinary particles (those that are restricted to velocities less than that of light) should be kept and which should be changed. The first part of this paper notes an alternative set of theories wherein that question is answered differently from the choices of this author; and the results of that are severe in terms of physical symmetry. Following that is a broad summary of what has been accomplished in this work: this starts with the recognition that low energy tachyons will create large gravitational fields through the space-components of the energy-momentum tensor and leads to studying properties of the cosmic neutrino background. Lastly there is a discourse on the various arguments that have been given against the very possibility for tachyons to exist.