English

Low-energy relativistic effects and nonlocality in time-dependent tunneling

Quantum Physics 2009-11-06 v1

Abstract

We consider exact time-dependent analytic solutions to the Schr\"odinger equation for tunneling in one dimension with cut off wave initial conditions at t=0t=0. We obtain that as soon as t0t \neq 0 the transmitted probability density at any arbitrary distance rises instantaneously with time in a linear manner. Using a simple model we find that the above nonlocal effect of the time-dependent solution is suppressed by consideration of low-energy relativistic effects. Hence at a distance x0x_0 from the potential the probability density rises after a time t0=x0/ct_0=x_0/c restoring Einstein causality. This implies that the tunneling time of a particle can never be zero.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0006110,
  title  = {Low-energy relativistic effects and nonlocality in time-dependent tunneling},
  author = {Gaston Garcia-Calderon and Alberto Rubio and Jorge Villavicencio},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0006110},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, 1 figure