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Physical Review A

Barrier interaction time and the Salecker-Wigner quantum clock: Wave-packet approach

Chang-Soo Park

Published Jul 23, 2009• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The time-of-flight measurement approach of Peres based on the Salecker-Wigner quantum clock is applied to the one-dimensional scattering of a wave packet from a rectangular barrier. By directly evaluating the expectation value of the clock-time operator in the asymptotic states of wave packet long after the scattering process, we derive an average wave-packet clock time for the barrier interaction, which is expressed as an average of the stationary-state clock time over all possible initial scattering states of the wave packet. We show that the average wave-packet clock time is identical to the average dwell time of a wave packet.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.80.012111

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The time-of-flight measurement approach of Peres based on the Salecker-Wigner quantum clock is applied to the one-dimensional scattering of a wave packet from a rectangular barrier. By directly evaluating the expectation value of the clock-time operator in the asymptotic states of wave packet long after the scattering process, we derive an average wave-packet clock time for the barrier interaction, which is expressed as an average of the stationary-state clock time over all possible initial scattering states of the wave packet. We show that the average wave-packet clock time is identical to the average dwell time of a wave packet.
We reexamine the Salecker-Wigner-Peres clock formalism and show that it can be directly applied to the phenomenon of tunneling. Then we apply this formalism to the determination of the tunneling time of a nonrelativistic wave packet, sharply concentrated around a tunneling energy, incident on a symmetric double-barrier potential. In order to deepen the discussion about the generalized Hartman effect, we consider the case in which the clock runs only when the particle can be found inside the region between the barriers and show that, whenever the probability to find the particle in this region is non-negligible, the corresponding time (which in this case turns out to be a dwell time) increases with barrier spacing.
The reflection and transmission Salecker-Wigner-Peres clock times averaged over the post-selected reflected and transmitted sub-ensembles, respectively, are investigated for the one dimensional scattering of a localized wave packet through an asymmetric barrier. The dwell time averaged over the same post-selected sub-ensembles is also considered. The emergence of negative average reflection times is examined and we show that while the average over the reflected sub-ensemble eliminates the negative peaks at resonance for the clock time, it still allows negative values for transparent barriers. The saturation of the average times with the barrier width (Hartman effect) is also addressed.
The Larmor clock which was proposed to determine tunneling times of particles with spin through barriers is studied. Tunneling of wave packets is numerically derived from the time-dependent Schr\"odinger-Pauli equation. The Larmor clock often does not proceed unidirectionally in time. The asymptotic readings are well defined. For wide wave packets the asymptotic Larmor times agree with the stationary-state predictions; deviations are seen for narrow wave packets. B\"uttiker's dwell time is investigated and its connection with the Larmor times is confirmed in the case of wave packets. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
We propose a general expression for the probability distribution of real-valued tunneling times of a localized particle, as measured by the Salecker-Wigner-Peres quantum clock. This general expression is used to obtain the distribution of times for the scattering of a particle through a static rectangular barrier and for the tunneling decay of an initially bound state after the sudden deformation of the potential, the latter case being relevant to understand tunneling times in recent attosecond experiments involving strong field ionization.
We propose a general expression for the probability distribution of real-valued tunneling times of a localized particle, as measured by the Salecker-Wigner-Peres quantum clock. This general expression is used to obtain the distribution of times for the scattering of a particle through a static rectangular barrier and for the tunneling decay of an initially bound state after the sudden deformation of the potential, the latter case being relevant to understand tunneling times in recent attosecond experiments involving strong field ionization.