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Quantum Tunneling Found to be Instantaneous


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According to the Theories of Relativity, the Universe has the speed of light as its speed limit, and this rules our day-to-day life. Quantum mechanics however, likes getting around such rules and has been caught doing so, which begs the question of if it is violating relativity or going around it? Researchers at the Australian National University believe they have the answer with regard to tunneling.

Quantum tunneling is an interesting phenomenon that is important in many places, including the nuclear fusion at the core of stars, scanning tunneling microscope, and FLASH memory. It involves particles acting like waves and skipping over barriers that would otherwise block them, thanks to their position not being well-defined. The question has been if tunneling has a speed that surpasses the speed of light, and according to the researchers it does not because that rule does not exactly apply. The math apparently works out so that the time it takes to tunnel across a barrier is a complex value, with an imaginary part, so the tunneling velocity must also be imaginary. What this translates to is that the tunneling must occur instantaneously, as imaginary values do not really work in our real Universe.

This discovery should have a number of impacts by allowing technology to reach faster speeds and smaller size, where tunneling plays an important factor for leakage. It also solves problems with some attosecond scale (10-18) observations, such as a delay between a photon striking an atom and an electron being ejected from it. Based on the researchers' calculations, this delay is caused by the nucleus trying to pulling the electron back in, and not from tunneling.

Source: The Australian National University



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