Larmor precession and tunneling time of a relativistic neutral spinning particle through an arbitrary potential barrier

Abstract

The Larmor precession of a relativistic neutral spin-1/2 particle in a uniform constant magnetic field confined to the region of a one-dimensional arbitrary potential barrier is investigated. The spin precession serves as a clock to measure the time spent by a quantum particle traversing a potential barrier. With the help of general spin coherent state it is explicitly shown that the precession time is equal to the dwell time.

10 pages, 1 figure. To be published in Phys. Rev. A (01 February 2002)