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arXiv:1312.1772 · New Journal of Physics

On quantum tunneling in real time

Neil Turok

Published Jun 5, 2014• 41 citations

Abstract

A detailed real time description of quantum tunneling in the semiclassical limit is given, using complex classical trajectories. This picture connects naturally with the ideas of post-selection and weak measurement introduced by Aharonov and collaborators. I show that one can precisely identify the complex classical trajectory which a post-selected tunneling particle has followed, and which dominates the path integral in the limit as Planck's constant tends to zero. Detailed analytical calculations are presented for tunneling in cubic and quartic potentials. For a long post-selected tunneling time, the imaginary part of the tunneling coordinate is found to achieve very large values just before the particle tunnels. I discuss how the real and imaginary parts of the particle's coordinate may, in principle, be independently measured using weak measurements. It would be very interesting to observe this effect, which would demonstrate the essential role of complex numbers in our closest possible classical description of reality. Extensions to quantum field theory and general relativity are briefly discussed.

DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/16/6/063006

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A detailed real time description of quantum tunneling in the semiclassical limit is given, using complex classical trajectories. This picture connects naturally with the ideas of post-selection and weak measurement introduced by Aharonov and collaborators. I show that one can precisely identify the complex classical trajectory which a post-selected tunneling particle has followed, and which dominates the path integral in the limit as Planck's constant tends to zero. Detailed analytical calculations are presented for tunneling in cubic and quartic potentials. For a long post-selected tunneling time, the imaginary part of the tunneling coordinate is found to achieve very large values just before the particle tunnels. I discuss how the real and imaginary parts of the particle's coordinate may, in principle, be independently measured using weak measurements. It would be very interesting to observe this effect, which would demonstrate the essential role of complex numbers in our closest possible classical description of reality. Extensions to quantum field theory and general relativity are briefly discussed.

Abstract It is well known that quantum tunneling can be described by instantons in the imaginary-time path integral formalism. However, its description in the real-time path integral formalism has been elusive. Here we establish a statement that quantum tunneling can be characterized in general by the contribution of complex saddle points, which can be identified by using the Picard-Lefschetz theory. We demonstrate this explicitly by performing Monte Carlo simulations of simple quantum mechanical systems, overcoming the sign problem by the generalized Lefschetz thimble method. We confirm numerically that the contribution of complex saddle points manifests itself in a complex “weak value” of the Hermitian coordinate operator

\hat{x}

x ̂ evaluated at time t, which is a physical quantity that can be measured by experiments in principle. We also discuss the transition to classical dynamics based on our picture.

We revisit the path integral description of quantum tunneling and its generalization to excited states. For clarity, we focus on the simple toy model of a point particle in a double-well potential, for which we perform all steps explicitly. Instead of performing the familiar Wick rotation from physical to imaginary time—which is inconsistent with the requisite boundary conditions when treating tunneling from excited states—we regularize the path integral by adding an infinitesimal complex contribution to the Hamiltonian, while keeping time strictly real. We find that this gives rise to a complex stationary-phase solution, in agreement with recent insights from Picard-Lefshetz theory. We then show that there exists a class of analytic solutions for the corresponding equations of motion, which can be made to match the appropriate boundary conditions in the physically relevant limits of a vanishing regulator and an infinite physical time. We provide a detailed discussion of this nontrivial limit. We find that, for systems without an explicit time-dependence, our approach reproduces the picture of an instantonlike solution defined on a finite Euclidean-time interval. Lastly, we discuss the generalization of our approach to broader classes of systems, for which it serves as a reliable framework for high-precision calculations.

We study tunneling in one-dimensional quantum mechanics using the path integral in real time, where solutions of the classical equation of motion live in the complex plane. Analyzing solutions with small (complex) energy, relevant for constructing the wave function after a long time, we unravel the analytic structure of the action, and show explicitly how the imaginary time bounce arises as a parameterization of the lowest order term in the energy expansion. The real time calculation naturally extends to describe the wave function in the free region of the potential, reproducing the usual WKB approximation. The extension of our analysis to the semiclassical correction due to fluctuations on the saddle is left for future work.

Quantum tunneling is mostly discussed in the Euclidean path integral formalism using instantons. On the other hand, it is difficult to understand quantum tunneling based on the real-time path integral due to its oscillatory nature, which causes the notorious sign problem. We show that recent development of the Lefschetz thimble method enables us to investigate this issue numerically. In particular, we find that quantum tunneling occurs due to complex trajectories, which are actually observable experimentally by using the so-called weak measurement.

Chaotic tunneling occurring in the standard map, which is one of the most familiar paradigms in simple chaotic mappings, is analyzed in terms of complex semiclassical theory in the time domain. It is shown that the complex classical trajectories successfully describe the transition to the region where the real classical path cannot reach. In connection with our previous result (Physica D115 (1998), 234), the universality of the organizing rule to find out dominantly contributing complex paths is suggested. Several fundamental problems in the treatment of semiclassical theory in the complex domain are also discussed.