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arXiv:quant-ph/0007079

Effect of classically forbidden momenta in one dimensional quantum scattering

Andrés D. Baute, I. L. Egusquiza, Juan Gonzalo Muga

Published Jul 20, 2000• 1 citation
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Abstract

The transmitted wave that results from a collision of a wave packet which is initially to the left of a potential barrier depends in general on the amplitudes of negative momenta of the initial state. The exact form of this dependence is shown and the importance of this classically forbidden effect is illustrated with numerical examples. Special care is taken to account properly for bound states.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0007079

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The transmitted wave that results from a collision of a wave packet which is initially to the left of a potential barrier depends in general on the amplitudes of negative momenta of the initial state. The exact form of this dependence is shown and the importance of this classically forbidden effect is illustrated with numerical examples. Special care is taken to account properly for bound states.
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We study the dynamics of the classical and quantum mechanical scattering of a wave packet from an oscillating barrier. Our main focus is on the dependence of the transmission coefficient on the initial energy of the wave packet for a wide range of oscillation frequencies. The behavior of the quantum transmission coefficient is affected by tunneling phenomena, resonances, and kinematic effects emanating from the time dependence of the potential. We show that when kinematic effects dominate (mainly in intermediate frequencies), classical mechanics provides very good approximation of quantum results. In that frequency region, the classical and quantum transmission coefficients are in optimal agreement. Moreover, the transmission threshold (i.e., the energy above which the transmission coefficient becomes larger than a specific small threshold value) is found to exhibit a minimum. We also consider the form of the transmitted wave packet and we find that for low values of the frequency the incoming classical and quantum wave packet can be split into a train of well-separated coherent pulses, a phenomenon that admits purely classical kinematic interpretation.
Due to a transient quantum interference during a wave packet collision with a potential barrier, a particular momentum, that depends on the potential parameters, but is close to the initial average momentum, becomes suppressed. The hole left pushes the momentum distribution outwards leading to a significant constructive enhancement of lower and higher momenta. This is explained in the momentum complex-plane language in terms of a saddle point and two contiguous ``structural'' poles, which are not associated with resonances but with incident and transmitted components of the wave function.
The time of passage of the transmitted wave packet in a tunneling collision of a quantum particle with a square potential barrier becomes independent of the barrier width in a range of barrier thickness. This is the Hartman effect, which has been frequently associated with ``superluminality.'' A fundamental limitation on the effect is set by nonrelativistic ``causality conditions.'' We demonstrate first that the causality conditions impose more restrictive bounds on the negative time delays (time advancements) when no bound states are present. These restrictive bounds are in agreement with a naive, and generally false, causality argument based on the positivity of the ``extrapolated phase time,'' one of the quantities proposed to characterize the duration of the barrier's traversal. Nevertheless, square wells may in fact lead to much larger advancements than square barriers. We point out that close to the thresholds of new bound states, the time advancement increases considerably, while, at the same time, the transmission probability is large, which facilitates the possible observation of the enhanced time advancement.