Relativistic spin-0 particle in a box: bound states, wavepackets, and the disappearance of the Klein paradox

TL;DR

This paper explores the relativistic Klein-Gordon particle in a box, revealing how Klein tunneling affects bound states and demonstrating the suppression of the Klein paradox in the infinite well limit.

Contribution

It introduces a scattering expansion method to analyze bound states and Klein tunneling for relativistic particles in a box, extending beyond shallow well approximations.

Findings

Klein tunneling persists in finite wells but is suppressed in the infinite well limit.

Quantization is recovered in the infinite well, similar to non-relativistic cases.

Wavepackets can be semi-analytically constructed to study Klein tunneling dynamics.

Abstract

The "particle in a box" problem is investigated for a relativistic particle obeying the Klein-Gordon equation. To find the bound states, the standard methods known from elementary non-relativistic quantum mechanics can only be employed for "shallow" wells. For deeper wells, when the confining potentials become supercritical, we show that a method based on a scattering expansion accounts for Klein tunneling (undamped propagation outside the well) and the Klein paradox (charge density increase inside the well). We will see that in the infinite well limit, the wavefunction outside the well vanishes and Klein tunneling is suppressed: quantization is thus recovered, similarly to the non-relativistic particle in a box. In addition, we show how wavepackets can be constructed semi-analytically from the scattering expansion, accounting for the dynamics of Klein tunneling in a physically intuitive way