On the quantum tunneling time: Instantaneous, finite or probabilistic?

Abstract

Quantum particles interacting with potential barriers are ubiquitous in physics, and the question of how much time they spend inside classically forbidden regions has attracted interest for many decades. Recent developments of new experimental techniques revived the issue and ignited a debate with often contradictory results. This motivates the present study of an exactly solvable model for quantum tunneling induced by a strong field. We show that the tunneling dynamics can depart significantly from the scenario in which the barrier-traversal time is zero or very small. However, our findings do not support the idea of a well-defined tunneling time either. Our numerically exact results should help in finding a consensus about this fundamental problem.

References in corpus (3)

• Grounding Bohmian Mechanics in Weak Values and Bayesianism
• Hermitian and non-Hermitian formulations of the time evolution of quantum decay
• Timescales of tunneling decay of a localized state

Cited by in corpus (7)

• The role of reflections in the generation of a time delay in strong field ionization
• Sub-barrier recollisions and the three classes of tunneling time delays in strong-field ionization
• On numerical solutions of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation
• Time Reversed States in Barrier Tunneling
• Impact of a tunneling particle on the quantum state of a barrier: two-particle wave-packet model
• Clocking the Quantum Sojourn Time: Spurious Scatterings and Correction to the Larmor Clock
• Exact energy-eigenstates of the Coulomb-Stark Hamiltonian