Abstract
Over 40 years ago, Hartman noted that the tunneling time τ of a particle through a barrier becomes independent of width for thick barriers. Lately, the Hartman effect has been seen as a support for superluminal tunneling time. By interpreting the reflection and transmission amplitudes in terms of multiple reflection series, we show that τ is linear in barrier width for thin barriers and may be associated with actual traversal time; for thick barriers, τ saturates to the Hartman value because of the suppression of all but the first term of the series due to the smallness of the tunneling factor. For large widths, τ cannot be identified with the propagation time but may be associated with a time to penetrate to a characteristic depth into the barrier, which is independent of width. We discuss data from frustrated internal reflection experiments, which support this view.
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Martinez, J.C. Confronting the Hartman effect with data from frustrated total internal reflection (FTIR). Laser Phys. 16, 1123–1127 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1054660X06070176
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S1054660X06070176