Formal analogy between the Dirac equation in its Majorana form and the discrete-velocity version of the Boltzmann kinetic equation

Phys Rev Lett. 2013 Oct 18;111(16):160602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.160602. Epub 2013 Oct 16.

Abstract

We point out a formal analogy between the Dirac equation in Majorana form and the discrete-velocity version of the Boltzmann kinetic equation. By a systematic analysis based on the theory of operator splitting, this analogy is shown to turn into a concrete and efficient computational method, providing a unified treatment of relativistic and nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. This might have potentially far-reaching implications for both classical and quantum computing, because it shows that, by splitting time along the three spatial directions, quantum information (Dirac-Majorana wave function) propagates in space-time as a classical statistical process (Boltzmann distribution).