Existence and nonexistence of an intrinsic tunneling time

Abstract

Using a time operator, we define a tunneling time for a particle going through a barrier. This tunneling time is the average of the phase time introduced by other authors. In addition to the delay time caused by the resonances over the barrier, the present tunneling time is also affected by the branch point at the edge of the energy continuum. We find that when the particle energy is near the branch point, the tunneling time becomes strongly dependent on the width of the incoming wave packet, which implies that there is no intrinsic tunneling time. This effect is related to the quantum uncertainty in the particle's momentum.

arXiv comment11 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Unified time analysis of photon and (nonrelativistic) particle Tunnelling, and the Superluminal group-velocity problem
• Quantum tunneling time
• More About Tunnelling Times, the Dwell Time, and the ``Hartman Effect"
• Time as a quantum observable
• Estimation of Buttiker-Landauer traversal time based on the visibility of transmission current
• Tunneling Time Distribution by means of Nelson's Quantum Mechanics and Wave-Particle Duality

Cited by in corpus (8)

• An operational approach to indirectly measuring tunneling time
• Time operators in stroboscopic wavepacket basis and the time scales in tunneling
• The time distribution of quantum events
• A study of transit times in Dirac tunneling
• Relativistic tunneling through opaque barriers
• Self-Adjoint Time Operator of a Quantum Field
• Proper time operator and its uncertainty relation
• Time as a dynamical variable in quantum decay