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There have been several questions about whether time is continuous or not and it seems like the answer isn't currently known. I know quantum mechanics treats time as continuous and any mathematics that involves integrating over some time interval treats time as continuous too.

Surely though there are experiments that are quite sensitive to discrete time with large intervals. It seems the shortest laser pulse so far is only 67 attoseconds ($67 \times 10^{-18}\: \mathrm{s}$) but wouldn't this experiment actually constrain time intervals to much less than that? Are short laser pulses even a good experiment to determine if time is discrete or not?

So, assuming time isn't continuous, what is the best-known upper-bound on time intervals? Also, which experiments have done the best to constrain how non-continuous time could be?

Brandon Enright
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1 Answers1

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The lifetimes of the W and Z boson and top quark are each on the order of $10 ^ {-25}\,\rm{s}$ .

The Z-boson lifetime is $2.64 \times 10^{-25}s$ from a decay width of $2.495 \pm 0.0023 \, \rm{GeV}$. Decay width for the W-boson is $2.085 \pm 0.042\, \rm{ GeV}$

If time were not intervals of less than this order of magnitude ($10 ^ {-25}\,\rm{s}$), I would expect narrowing of line width (longer lifetime) and maybe distortion of line shape.

Melquíades
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DavePhD
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