Superluminal interactions in near-field optics

The fact that photons emitted from an electric-dipole active atom cannot be spatially localized better than to the near-field zone of the atom is seen as the origin of genuine superluminality. By means of a simple model dipole current density the general theory is used to demonstrate numerically how superluminality enters the near-field dynamics, and how from a measurement one could be tempted to believe that superluminal propagation effects occur. Furthermore, it is shown how for source-detector distances larger than a pulse length one should be able to divide the pulse into two separate parts: one purely superluminal part arising solely in the non-local generation process of the field, and another part seemingly propagating with superluminal speed. We comment on different velocity analyses, and we argue that the only fundamental velocity entering the problem is the vacuum velocity of light, which in a measurement would appear as the velocity of the trailing edge of the pulse.