The $$(1+3)$$-dimensional ‘quantum principle of relativity’ is Einstein’s principle of relativity

Abstract We show that the $$(1+3)$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> -dimensional ‘superboost’ operators, proposed in Dragan and Ekert’s most recent work on superluminal reference frames (Dragan et al. in Class Quantum Gravity 40(2): 025013, 2023), are simply the canonical Lorentz boosts, expressed in nonstandard notation. Their $$(1+3)$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> -dimensional ‘superflip’, which is claimed to interchange time and space dimensions for a superluminal observer, travelling with infinite speed, is equivalent to applying the identity operator together with an arbitrary relabeling. Physically, it corresponds to staying put within the canonical rest frame, then renaming space as ‘time’ and time as ‘space’. We conclude that their extension of the ‘quantum principle of relativity’, proposed in earlier work on $$(1+1)$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mo>(</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>+</mml:mo> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> <mml:mo>)</mml:mo> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> -dimensional spacetimes (Dragan and Ekert in New J Phys 22(3): 033038, 2020), to ordinary Minkowski space, is simply Einstein’s principle of relativity, proposed in 1905.