Interpretation of Electron Tunneling from Uncertainty Principle

In a previous paper [Blado G, Owens C, and Meyers V 2014 Quantum Wells and the Generalized Uncertainty Principle Eur. J. Phys. 35 065011], we showed that quantum gravity effects can be discussed with only a background in non-relativistic quantum mechanics at the undergraduate level by looking at the effect of the generalized uncertainty principle (GUP) on the finite and infinite square wells. In this paper, we derive the GUP corrections to the tunneling probability of simple ...

The question in the title may be answered by considering the outcome of a ``weak measurement'' in the sense of Aharonov et al. Various properties of the resulting time are discussed, including its close relation to the Larmor times. It is a universal description of a broad class of measurement interactions, and its physical implications are unambiguous.

We point out a close physical and formal similarity between the problems of electron tunneling in the effective environment and the weak localization effects in the presence of interactions. In both cases the results are expressed in terms of the ``energy probability distribution function'' $P(E)$ which has a finite width even at T=0 due to interactions.

After the review by Hauge and Stovneng the old question of "How long does it take to tunnel through the barrier?" has not still lost its relevance. As before, there is no clear answer to this question even for the one-dimensional completed scattering (OCS). In this paper we show that this seemingly simple question stands alongside with such fundamental problems of quantum mechanics (QM) as the Schrodinger's-cat and and EPR-Bohm paradoxes. Their common feature is that the stat...

Quantum mechanics predicts an exponentially small probability that a particle with energy greater than the height of a potential barrier will nevertheless reflect from the barrier in violation of classical expectations. This process can be regarded as tunneling in momentum space, leading to a simple derivation of the reflection probability.

Quantum tunneling is considered from the point of view of local realism. It is concluded that a quantum object tunneling through a potential barrier cannot be interpreted as a point-like particle because such an interpretation generates a contradiction with the impossibility of faster-than-light motion. Such a contradiction does not arise if a quantum object is considered as a continuous medium formed by the fields of matter. The dynamics law of the mechanical motion of these...

Over the preceeding twenty years, the role of underlying classical dynamics in quantum mechanical tunneling has received considerable attention. A number of new tunneling phenomena have been uncovered that have been directly linked to the set of dynamical possibilities arising in simple systems that contain at least some chaotic motion. These tunneling phenomena can be identified by their novel $\hbar$-dependencies and/or statistical behaviors. We summarize a sampling of thes...

The fundamental sources of noise in a vacuum-tunneling probe used as an electromechanical transducer to monitor the location of a test mass are examined using a first-quantization formalism. We show that a tunneling transducer enforces the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for the position and momentum of a test mass monitored by the transducer through the presence of two sources of noise: the shot noise of the tunneling current and the momentum fluctuations transferred by the...

A classical representation of an extended body over barriers of height greater than the energy of the incident body is shown to have many features in common with quantum tunneling as the center-of-mass literally goes through the barrier. It is even classically possible to penetrate any finite barrier with a body of arbitrarily low energy if the body is sufficiently long. A distribution of body lengths around the de Broglie wavelength leads to reasonable agreement with the qua...

We study the temporal aspects of quantum tunneling as manifested in time-of-arrival experiments in which the detected particle tunnels through a potential barrier. In particular, we present a general method for constructing temporal probabilities in tunneling systems that (i) defines `classical' time observables for quantum systems and (ii) applies to relativistic particles interacting through quantum fields. We show that the relevant probabilities are defined in terms of spe...