Transient fields

I can probably tell you in 4 years...

I would think that the field would simultaneously cease to exist, but that relativisticly speaking, news of that non-existence would have to propagate out at the speed of light (with news of the previous existence still propagating out at the speed of light ahead of that), which would allow the particle to influence other particles despite its short lifespan.



I'd think the same as the electric field.



I doubt it.

(3) Is it possible to use the field/mass time differential to generate anti-gravity effects?

A clarification:

Assume that a quantum theory of gravity consistent with Special Relativity exists, such that the gravitational force is transmitted by gauge bosons (gravitons) moving at the speed of light. The short-lived particle mass which generates the graviton field is necessarily moving slower than light. Reference frames exist for which the graviton field continues to exist after the particle mass ceases to exist. Since the graviton field in the absence of the particle mass represents an asymmetry and a violation of the conservation of energy (?) such a reference frame should experience an offsetting change in mass, somewhere. (That at least is the idea.)

Of course, with a field of virtual particles, it gets tricky, since theoretically they already "borrow" energy by exploiting the Heisenberg uncertainty relation between energy and time.

P.S. The particle doesn't have to be intrinsically short-lived: for example, any charged particle/anti-particle pair could annihilate each other, converting all mass to radiative energy; meanwhile their graviton fields exist for some (or all) reference frame(s). This creates the required asymmetry while preserving conservation of electric charge (net neutral charge before and after).

Incidentally, the asymmetry which (hypothetically) gives rise to anti-gravity effects might not involve disappearing mass at all; in fact energy has mass under the E=mc^2 formula so I'm not even sure that would work. But obviously if a particle mass ceases to exist while the boson field it generates doesn't, a symmetry violation of some sort exists, and the only remedy might be a compensating effect corresponding to "anti-gravity".

P.P.S. One could look at it this way: if a graviton field exists without a corresponding mass, then the only remedy is the generation of an equal but opposite field consisting of anti-gravitons, or at least of some phenomenon equivalent to this.