The Zitter Institute is an International Working Group created in 2023, whose primary objective is the promotion and evolution of Zitter Models of the electron’s dynamics.
Zitter models are neoclassical mechanics models that explain the well-known but puzzling zitterbewegung behavior that was uncovered by Erwin Schrodinger in his 1930 analysis of solutions of Dirac’s wave equation for a free electron.
Zitter models claim that this behavior is produced by a circular motion about the direction of the electron spin that combines with the electron’s global motion to give it a curved helical path at the speed of light (the global motion at the center of the spin is sub-luminal, which is where the electron’s inertia is focused so it is also called the center of mass).
This circular motion has the ultra-high angular frequency found by Schrodinger and a radius in the order of the reduced Compton wavelength of the electron. These models show that the intrinsic spin of the electron may be looked upon as the “orbital angular momentum” of the circular motion and that the current it produces give rise to the intrinsic magnetic moment of the electron.
One of the most well-known zitter models of the electron is a geometrical mechanics one published by David Hestenes in several papers in the Foundations of Physics starting in 1990. His model is based on a Space Time Algebra (aka Clifford algebra) analysis of Dirac’s wave equation.
Some other important zitter models are the Classical Model of the Dirac Electron in Physical Review Letters (1984) by Asim Barut and Nino Zanghi that is based on a postulated Lagrangian function with a classical spinor; the spinning particle models of Martin Rivas (covered in his 2001 book Kinematical Theory of Spinning Particles); and Giovanni Salesi’s Non-Newtonian Mechanics model in International J. Modern Physics (2002).