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Tunnel splittings for one dimensional potential wells revisited

Anupam Garg

Published Jan 1, 2000• 72 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The WKB and instanton answers for the tunnel splitting of the ground state in a symmetric double well potential are both reduced to an expression involving only the functionals of the potential, without the need for solving any auxilliary problems. This formula is applied to simple model problems. The prefactor for the splitting in the text book by Landau and Lifshitz is amended so as to apply to the ground and low lying excited states. Typeset using REVTEX 1 I.

Related papers

Tunnel splittings for one-dimensional potential wells revisited

Anupam Garg

The Wentzel–Kramers–Brillouin and instanton answers for the tunnel splitting of the ground state in a symmetric double-well potential are both reduced to an expression involving only functionals of the potential, without the need for solving any auxilliary problems. This formula is applied to simple model problems. The prefactor for the splitting in the textbook by Landau and Lifshitz is amended so as to apply to the ground and low lying excited states.

arXiv:cond-mat/0003115•American Journal of Physics•May 1, 2000•120 citations

Tunneling and energy splitting in an asymmetric double-well potential

Dae-Yup Song

An asymmetric double-well potential is considered, assuming that the minima of the wells are quadratic with a frequency ω and the difference of the minima is close to a multiple of �ω. A WKB wave function is constructed on both sides of the local maximum between the wells, by matching the WKB function to the exact wave functions near the classical turning points. The continuities of the wave function and its first derivative at the local maximum then give the energy-level splitting formula, which not only reproduces the instanton result for a symmetric potential, but also elucidates the appearance of resonances of tunneling in the asymmetric potential. Key words: quantum tunneling, energy splitting, double-well potential PACS: 03.65.Sq, 03.65.Ge, 82.20.Xr 1

•Aug 4, 2013•22 citations

High Order WKB Prediction of the Energy Splitting in the Symmetric Double Well Potential

Marko Robnik, Luca Salasnich, Marko Vrani\v car

The accuracy of the WKB approximation when predicting the energy splitting of bound states in a double well potential is the main subject of this paper. The splitting of almost degenerate energy levels below the top of the barrier results from the tunneling and is thus supposed to be exponentially small. By using the standard WKB quantization we deduce an analytical formula for the energy splitting, which is the usual Landau formula with additional quantum corrections. We also examine the accuracy of our and Landau formula numerically for the case of the symmetric double well quartic potential.

arXiv:nlin/0003050•Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement•Jan 1, 2000•1 citation

Instantonic approach to triple well potential

By using a usual instanton method we obtain the energy splitting due to quantum tunneling through the triple well barrier. It is shown that the term related to the midpoint of the energy splitting in propagator is quite different from that of double well case, in that it is proportional to the algebraic average of the frequencies of the left and central wells. Typeset using REVTEX 1 I.

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Double well ground state energy splitting (or instanton flipping rate); rendering the implicit explicit

J H Hannay

A prime example of quantum tunnelling is the semiclassical 'energy splitting' of the levels of a symmetrical double well potential, or equivalently the flipping rate of an instanton. Curiously the accepted expression for the ground state energy splitting in terms of the (smooth) potential function has not been pursued to the full explicitness available from classical mechanics. This implicitness is rectified here.

arXiv:2403.18050•Mar 26, 2024•0 citations

Tunnel Splitting in Asymmetric Double Well Potentials: An Improved WKB Calculation

Seyyed M. H. Halataei, Anthony J. Leggett

We present an improved Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) calculation of tunnel splitting in one dimensional asymmetric double well potentials. We show that the tunnel splitting in general can have linear dependence on the bias energy, beside the well-known quadratic dependence. We demonstrate that the linear correction is greater than previously thought.

arXiv:1703.05758•Mar 15, 2017•6 citations
The WKB and instanton answers for the tunnel splitting of the ground state in a symmetric double well potential are both reduced to an expression involving only the functionals of the potential, without the need for solving any auxilliary problems. This formula is applied to simple model problems. The prefactor for the splitting in the text book by Landau and Lifshitz is amended so as to apply to the ground and low lying excited states. Typeset using REVTEX 1 I.
An asymmetric double-well potential is considered, assuming that the minima of the wells are quadratic with a frequency ω and the difference of the minima is close to a multiple of �ω. A WKB wave function is constructed on both sides of the local maximum between the wells, by matching the WKB function to the exact wave functions near the classical turning points. The continuities of the wave function and its first derivative at the local maximum then give the energy-level splitting formula, which not only reproduces the instanton result for a symmetric potential, but also elucidates the appearance of resonances of tunneling in the asymmetric potential. Key words: quantum tunneling, energy splitting, double-well potential PACS: 03.65.Sq, 03.65.Ge, 82.20.Xr 1
The accuracy of the WKB approximation when predicting the energy splitting of bound states in a double well potential is the main subject of this paper. The splitting of almost degenerate energy levels below the top of the barrier results from the tunneling and is thus supposed to be exponentially small. By using the standard WKB quantization we deduce an analytical formula for the energy splitting, which is the usual Landau formula with additional quantum corrections. We also examine the accuracy of our and Landau formula numerically for the case of the symmetric double well quartic potential.