On the Sagnac Effect for Massive Particles and Some of its Eepistemological Consequences
Fran?ois Goy
Keywords: Sagnac effect, clock synchronization, special relativity, matter waves
The author shows in this article that a coherent description of
the Sagnac effect for massive particles, which takes account of
length contraction and time dilation can only be obtained with
a so called ?absolute? clock synchronization parameter. Any
other synchronization leads to an incoherent description
between the point of view of an observer on the rotating
platform and a non-rotating observer. This demonstration
generalises the one made by Selleri and the author for the
Sagnac effect with electromagnetic waves.
