The Impact of Lorentz Violation on the Klein Tunneling Effect

TL;DR

This paper investigates how tiny Lorentz-violating terms affect Klein tunneling of Dirac particles, revealing polarization-dependent shifts and conditions where no modification occurs, thus providing insights into Lorentz symmetry violations.

Contribution

It introduces a model analyzing Lorentz-violation effects on Klein tunneling, highlighting the dependence on the nature of the Lorentz-violating vector and polarization effects.

Findings

Lorentz violation causes polarization-dependent frequency shifts.

Timelike Lorentz violation has negligible effect on transmission.

Spacelike and lightlike violations induce measurable shifts.

Abstract

We discuss the impact of a tiny Lorentz-violating $b^\mu$ term on the one dimensional motion of a Dirac particle scattering on a rectangular barrier. We assume the experiment is performed in a particular inertial frame, where the components of $b^\mu$ are assumed constants. The results show that Lorentz-violation modification to the transmission rate depends on the observer Lorentz nature of $b^\mu$. For a spacelike or lightlike $b^\mu$ the induced resonant frequency shift depends on the polarization, while for timelike $b^\mu$ there is essentially no modification.