Timescales of tunneling decay of a localized state

Abstract

Motivated by recent time domain experiments on ultrafast atom ionization, we analyze the transients and timescales that characterize, besides the relatively long lifetime, the decay by tunneling of a localized state. While the tunneling starts immediately, some time is required for the outgoing flux to develop. This short-term behavior depends strongly on the initial state. For the initial state tightly localized so that the initial transients are dominated by over-the-barrier motion, the timescale for the flux propagation through the barrier is close to the Büttiker-Landauer traversal time. Then a quasistationary, slowly decay process follows, which sets ideal conditions for observing diffraction in time at longer times and distances. To define operationally a tunnelling time at the barrier edge, we extrapolate backwards the propagation of the wave packet escaped from the potential. This extrapolated time is considerably longer than the timescale of the flux and density buildup at the barrier edge.

arXiv comment9 pages, 10 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Under-the-barrier dynamics in laser-induced relativistic tunneling
• Relativistic features and time delay of laser-induced tunnel-ionization
• The Wigner time delay for laser induced tunnel-ionization via the electron propagator
• Explanation and observability of diffraction in time
• Virtual-detector approach to tunnel ionization and tunneling times
• On the quantum tunneling time: Instantaneous, finite or probabilistic?
• Spin dynamics in tunneling decay of a metastable state
• Dynamics of a quantum wave emitted by a decaying and evanescent point source
• Quantum noise with exchange and tunneling: Predictions for a two-particle scattering experiment with time-dependent oscillatory potentials
• Salecker-Wigner-Peres quantum clock applied to strong-field tunnel ionization