Quantum Mechanical Tunneling

M. Jonson

Mohammad Reza Abolhasani, M. Golshani

Recently, people have calculated tunneling's characteristic times within Bohmian mechanics. Contrary to some characteristic times defined within the framework of the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, these have reasonable values. Here, we introduce one of the available definitions for tunneling's characteristic times within the standard interpretation as the best definition that can be accepted for the tunneling times. We show that, due to experimental limitations, Bohmian mechanics leads to the same tunneling times.

Mark R. A. Shegelski, Erik V. Kozijn

For smooth potential barriers, we compare the quasi-classical tunneling time with an expression that gives a fully quantum mechanical tunneling time. The expression we choose for the quantum mechanical tunneling time is one that has heuristic value. We report results wherein this quantum mechanical tunneling time and the quasi-classical time differ significantly, both quantitatively and qualitatively. To determine the reasons for these differences, we compare the trends in the two times that result from varying the potential. Our findings suggest that, for smooth potential barriers, the quasi-classical tunneling time is unreliable for many cases where it is employed. PACS Nos.: 03.65Xp, 03.65-w

D K Roy