Influence of spin on tunneling times in the super-relativistic regime

TL;DR

This paper investigates how particle spin influences tunneling times in relativistic quantum mechanics, using an alternative Dirac equation representation to derive a model that separates spin-dependent dwell times and self-interference delays.

Contribution

It introduces a new mathematical model based on an alternative Dirac representation to analyze spin effects on tunneling times in the super-relativistic regime.

Findings

Tunneling time depends on particle spin orientation.

The model separates dwell time and self-interference delay contributions.

Spin-up and spin-down particles exhibit different tunneling time behaviors.

Abstract

For the relativistic tunneling effect described using Dirac's equation, in [Phys. Rev. A 70, 052112 (2004)] the authors presented the deduction of a general result that allows for the determination of the phase time (group delay) as the sum of the particle dwell time inside a potential barrier and of the self-interference delay associated with the incident and reflected wave functions interaction. In this article, a mathematical model is derived through a construction analogous to the proposal mentioned above, but based on an alternative representation for Dirac's equation. This representation is similar to the one introduced in [Found. Phys. 45, 1586 (2015)]. Thus, from the application of this model in the study of the tunneling effect in the absence of an external magnetic field, the influence of spin on the tunneling times is described. More specifically, the tunneling time is obtained as the sum of the dwell times inside the potential barrier for particles with spin up and spin down and the self-interaction time associated with the incident and reflected wave functions for particles with spin up.