English

Dwell times for transmission and reflection

Quantum Physics 2007-05-23 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics

Abstract

As was shown in quant-ph/0405028, the state of a tunneling particle can be uniquely presented as a coherent superposition of two states to describe alternative sub-processes, transmission and reflection. In this paper, on the basis of the stationary wave functions for these sub-processes, we give new definitions of the dwell times for transmission and reflection. In the case of rectangular potential barriers the dwell times are obtained explicitly. In contrast with the well-known B\"{u}ttiker's dwell-time, our dwell time for transmission increases exponentially, for the under-barrier tunneling, with increasing the barrier's width. By our approach the well-known Hartman effect is rather an artifact resulted from an improper interpretation of the wave-packet tunneling and experimental data, but not a real physical effect accompanying the tunneling phenomenon.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0502073,
  title  = {Dwell times for transmission and reflection},
  author = {N. L. Chuprikov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0502073},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

Revtex, 4 pages, 5 eps-figures; the dwell time for reflection is revised