Chapter 19: Time-Delay, Reflection Time Operator and Minimum Tunneling Time
One of the controversial issues of modern quantum theory is the question of tunneling time, i.e. the time that takes a particle to move from one side of the barrier to the other side. We can classify the problems related to the tunneling time into two groups:
(1) – In the first group we have a well-defined formulation and an unambiguous way of measuring the time that is related to the motion under the barrier. among these are the following examples:
(a) – Oscillations of a wave packet in a double-well potential such as the period of motion in a NH3 molecule, Sec. 25.5.
(b) – Lifetime of a particle or system of particles trapped behind a barrier, and by tunneling can escape to infinity, e.g. α-decay.
(c) – A lesser known, but the case of reection time which allows for an exact quantum-mechanical formulation, and will be discussed later in this chapter.
