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arXiv:0709.3495 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)

Anomalous relativistic tunneling and exotic point interactions

P. Hejčík, T. Cheon

Published Feb 4, 2008• 8 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We examine the one-dimensional quantum scattering of a Dirac particle off relativistic potential barriers. With proper considerations of the Dirac sea, the existence of anomalous tunneling at zero incident energy is revealed for a particular type of relativistic potential having the same magnitudes and opposite signs for scalar and vector components. It is also shown that this leads to an exotic short-range limit of the potentials.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/81/50001

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We examine the one-dimensional quantum scattering of a Dirac particle off relativistic potential barriers. With proper considerations of the Dirac sea, the existence of anomalous tunneling at zero incident energy is revealed for a particular type of relativistic potential having the same magnitudes and opposite signs for scalar and vector components. It is also shown that this leads to an exotic short-range limit of the potentials.
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We propose the quantum simulation of the Dirac equation with potentials, allowing the study of relativistic scattering and Klein tunneling. This quantum relativistic effect permits a positive-energy Dirac particle to propagate through a repulsive potential via the population transfer to negative-energy components. We show how to engineer scalar, pseudoscalar, and other potentials in the 1+11+11+1 Dirac equation by manipulating two trapped ions. The Dirac spinor is represented by the internal states of one ion, while its position and momentum are described by those of a collective motional mode. The second ion is used to build the desired potentials with high spatial resolution.
Abstract We reanalyze the problem of a 1D Dirac single particle colliding with the electrostatic potential step of height V 0 with a positive incoming energy that tends to the limit point of the so-called Klein energy zone, i.e. E → V 0 − mc 2, for a given V 0. In such a case, the particle is actually colliding with an impenetrable barrier. In fact, V 0 → E + mc 2, for a given relativistic energy E( < V 0), is the maximum value that the height of the step can reach and that ensures the perfect impenetrability of the barrier. Nevertheless, we note that, unlike the nonrelativistic case, the entire eigensolution does not completely vanish, either at the barrier or in the region under the step, but its upper component does satisfy the Dirichlet boundary condition at the barrier. More importantly, by calculating the mean value of the force exerted by the impenetrable wall on the particle in this eigenstate and taking its nonrelativistic limit, we recover the required result. We use two different approaches to obtain the latter two results. In one of these approaches, the corresponding force on the particle is a type of boundary quantum force. Throughout the article, various issues related to the Klein energy zone, the transmitted solutions to this problem, and impenetrable barriers related to boundary conditions are also discussed. In particular, if the negative-energy transmitted solution is used, the lower component of the scattering solution satisfies the Dirichlet boundary condition at the barrier, but the mean value of the external force when V 0 → E + mc 2 does not seem to be compatible with the existence of the impenetrable barrier.
The Aharonov-Bohm scattering of relativistic spin-1∕21∕21∕2 particles with an anomalous magnetic moment are studied. The scattering cross sections for unpolarized and polarized particles are obtained by solving the Dirac-Pauli equation. It is somewhat unexpected that the results are in general the same as those for particles without an anomalous magnetic moment. However, when the incident energy takes some special values, the cross section for polarized particles is dramatically changed. In these cases the helicity of scattered particles is not conserved. In particular, the helicity of particles scattered in the backward direction is all reversed. In the nonrelativistic limit, a very simple relation between the polarized directions of the incident and scattered particles is found, for both general and special incident energies. For particles without an anomalous magnetic moment this relation can be drawn from previous results but it appears to be unnoticed.
It is shown that the amplitude for reflection of a Dirac particle with arbitrarily low momentum incident on a potential of finite range is −1 and hence the transmission coefficient T = 0 in general. If, however, the potential supports a half-bound state at momentum k = 0 this result does not hold. In the case of an asymmetric potential the transmission coefficient T will be nonzero whilst for a symmetric potential T = 1. Therefore in some circumstances a Dirac particle of arbitrarily small momentum can tunnel without reflection through a potential barrier.