Supersonic and superluminal energy and speed of information via temporal interference in a dispersionless environment

Numerical implementation of a theory yields acoustic wave packets whose peak-to-peak speeds from source to receiver are supersonic in a dispersionless medium due to temporal interference between direct and boundary-reflected paths. The effect occurs when the source and receiver are near each other and at least one is within cδt[over ̃]/2 of the boundary, where c is the phase speed of propagation in the medium, and δt[over ̃] is the smallest temporal separation between the paths at which interference first occurs. This direct+reflected path mechanism is distinct from mechanisms yielding superluminal speeds for electromagnetic waves (EM) including quantum tunneling and anomalous dispersion. For temporally interfering direct+reflected acoustic paths, simulations yield a speed of information less than c. The speed of information from the interfering paths can exceed the speed derived from propagation only along the direct path. We conjecture these results will also hold for EM waves. If so, we prove the speed of information is less than or equal to the speed of light in a vacuum, so the effect does not violate special relativity. These theoretical and simulation results, as well as their conjectured EM extension, should be readily accessible to experimental verification.