The quantum superluminality in the tunnel-ionization process of H-like atoms

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that tunnel-ionization in H-like atoms with large nuclear charge can exhibit superluminal behavior, providing a theoretical basis for experimental investigation of quantum superluminality using attoclock measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a model showing superluminal tunnel-ionization in H-like atoms with large nuclear charge, expanding understanding of quantum tunneling times.

Findings

Superluminal tunnel-ionization is theoretically possible in H-like atoms with large nuclear charge.

The model aligns with previous attoclock measurements in certain regimes.

Quantum superluminality occurs under extreme conditions in the tunnel-ionization process.

Abstract

The quantum tunneling time remains the subject of heated debate, and one of its most curious features is faster-than-light or superluminal tunneling. Our tunnel-ionization model of the time-delay, presented in previous work, shows good agreement with the attoclock measurement in the adiabatic and nonadiabatic field calibrations, which also enables the determination of the barrier time-delay. In the present work, we show that the tunnel-ionization for H-like atoms with large nuclear charge can be superluminal (quantum superluminality), which in principle can be investigated experimentally using the attoclock scheme. We discuss the quantum superluminality in detail for the different regimes of the tunnel-ionization. Our result shows that quantum tunneling faster-than-light is indeed possible, albeit only under somewhat extreme conditions.