A REVIEW OF TUNNELING EFFECT

Komal Zafar MS(Physics)

Introduction

Quantum tunneling or tunneling is the quantum mechanical phenomenon where

a subatomic particle passes through a potential barrier. Quantum tunneling is not predicted by the
laws of classical mechanics where surmounting a potential barrier requires enough potential
energy. Quantum tunneling plays an essential role in several physical phenomena, such as
the nuclear fusion that occurs in main sequence stars like the Sun. It has
important applications in the tunnel diode, quantum computing, and in the scanning tunneling
microscope. The effect was predicted in the early 20th century, and its acceptance as a general
physical phenomenon came mid-century. Fundamental quantum mechanical concepts are central
to this phenomenon, which makes quantum tunneling one of the novel implications of quantum
mechanics. Quantum tunneling is projected to create physical limits to the size of
the transistors used in microprocessors, due to electrons being able to tunnel past them if the
transistors are too small. Tunneling is often explained in terms of the Heisenberg uncertainty
principle that the quantum object can be known as a wave or as a particle in general.

To understand the phenomenon, particles attempting to travel between potential barriers can be
compared to a ball trying to roll over a hill; quantum mechanics and classical mechanics differ in
their treatment of this scenario. Classical mechanics predicts that particles that do not have
enough energy to classically surmount a barrier will not be able to reach the other side. Thus, a
ball without sufficient energy to surmount the hill would roll back down. Or, lacking the energy
to penetrate a wall, it would bounce back (reflection) or in the extreme case, bury itself inside the
wall (absorption). In quantum mechanics, these particles can, with a very small
probability, tunnel to the other side, thus crossing the barrier. Here, the "ball" could, in a
sense, borrow energy from its surroundings to tunnel through the wall or "roll over the hill",
paying it back by making the reflected electrons more energetic than they otherwise would have
been. The reason for this difference comes from the treatment of matter in quantum mechanics
as having properties of waves and particles. One interpretation of this duality involves
the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which defines a limit on how precisely the position and
the momentum of a particle can be known at the same time. This implies that there are no
solutions with a probability of exactly zero (or one), though a solution may approach infinity if,
for example, the calculation for its position was taken as a probability of 1, the other, i.e. Its
speed, would have to be infinity. Hence, the probability of a given particle's existence on the
opposite side of an intervening barrier is non-zero, and such particles will appear on the 'other' (a
semantically difficult word in this instance) side with a relative frequency proportional to this
probability

Fig.1 Quantum tunneling through a barrier

A Brief History of Quantum Tunneling

Three years after the discovery of natural radioactivity in 1896, Elster and Geitel
found the exponential decay rate of radioactive substances experimentally. In 1900 Rutherford
introduced the idea of half-life of these chemicals, i.e. The time that the number of radioactive
nuclei reach one half of their original number. In 1905 Schweidler showed the statistical nature
of the decay. This means that the probability of disintegration of a nucleus does not depend on
the time of its formation and also the time that a particular nucleus decays can only be predicted
statistically. This idea was verified empirically by Kohlrausch in 1906. Later experiments
showed that the decay width ┌ (which is related to the half-life ┬ by ┬ =ln 2/┌ ) does not
depend on external variables such as pressure, temperature or chemical environment. The
exponential law of decay can be written either in differential form as
 −dN(t)
−┌𝑁(𝑡) = (1.1)
dt

Or as in integral form

N(t)=N0 exp (-┌ t) (1.2)

where No is the original number of nuclei (at t = 0), N(t) is their number at t > 0, and ┌ is the
decay probability per unit time. For the rate of decay one can use either T=1/┌or the half-life ┬
= T ln2. It should be pointed out that N(t) is not the result of a single measurement but it is the
average over a group of measurements, therefore P(t)= N(t)/ N0 is the probability that certain
nucleus has not decayed at the time t (t > 0) and has remained in its initial state. Instead of N(t)
we can use P(t)= N(t)/ N0 e┌t which is usually referred to as the law of exponential decay.

The theory of a-radioactivity on the basis of quantum tunneling was proposed by Gamow
who found the well-known Gamow formula. The story of this discovery is told by Rosenfeld
who was one of the leading nuclear physicists of the twentieth century. " In my experience
nuclear physic starts with the sudden appearance, one morning in the library of the Gottingen
Institute, of a fair-haired giant, with shortsighted, half-shut eyes behind his spectacles, who
introduced himself, with a broad smile, by declaring " I am Gamow." This pronouncement, at
that time, could not provoke very much excitement. As it turned out that Professor Born would
not be in for some time, I proposed to Gamow to go out for a walk. It was during the walk that he
told me what he was doing. He wanted to understand alpha radioactivity. Now, this seemed to
me and I think most physicists then would have had the same reaction – quite fantastic idea. All
we knew about nuclei was that they were very small and that they had spin; this had just emerged
from Pauli's interpretation of the hyperfine structure which spectroscopists had detected in the
spectra of the heaviest atoms.

Gamow's first attempt was a failure. In that he assumed that the particle is a point particle located
in the Coulomb field of the nucleus. He found a continuous spectrum for its emission, and this
was in contradiction with the empirical fact that that there are certain characteristic energies with
which the particles are emitted. Later Gamow thought of combining the attractive nuclear forces
with the Coulomb repulsion and this combination provided an effective barrier for the particle.
He solved the Schrodinger equation with this effective potential and he imposed the "outgoing"
wave boundary condition for large distances from the center of the nucleus. Gamow found that
this two-point boundary condition problem does not have a solution for the real energies, but for
complex energies there are solutions. He interpreted the complex part of the energy as the decay
width TJ, (or decay constant) of the disintegration and in this way he found the Geiger-Nuttall
formula which is a relation between ┌/2 and the energy of the emitted a-particle. This work was
completed shortly after Gamow's arrival at Gottingen. Born being one of the founders of modern
quantum mechanics criticized the foundation of Gamow's work arguing that the Hamiltonian is a
Hermitian operator and its eigenvalues must be real, not complex, as Gamow had assumed.
However the success of Gamow's result could not have been ignored. Therefore Born worked on
this problem for few weeks and obtained the same result by considering Hermitian operators and
states with real eigenvalues. For this Born assumed that inside the nucleus there are stationary
and distinct states, and the Coulomb potential outside the nucleus has a continuous spectrum
which overlaps with the discrete energies inside. Now one can consider these two sets of wave
functions (inside and outside) as a complete set of states and expand the original wave packet in
terms of these, to obtain essentially the same result as Gamow's.

These scientists had observed certain interesting and unusual features in the quantum mechanics
of one-dimensional systems, and they had applied this new mechanics to understand the physics
of the cold emission of the electrons. By reading these articles Gurney thought of applying the
same idea to solve the problem of a-decay. At first he asked the opinion of the physicist H.R.
Robertson about this approach, but he received no encouragement. Later when Gurney discussed
his idea with Condon, Condon realized the potential of this theory, and they decided to
collaborate on this project. Very soon they observed that it is not essential to know the shape of
the potential inside the nucleus, only one had to assume that the interior potential becomes zero
at a distance equal to the nuclear radius. They also observed that they can use the semi-classical
or WKB approximation to calculate the wave function under the barrier. In this way Gurney and
Condon found the solution to the Schrodinger equation for the radial wave function with the
condition that the amplitude of the wave function must be large inside and small outside the
nucleus. Prom the solution of the wave equation they found the decay width and the energy of
the emitted a-particle approximately. Within few days this work was submitted to the periodical
Nature (July 1928). Gamow in 1928 and 1929 published papers pointing out this implication of
quantum tunneling. About the same time Gurney was thinking about resonant tunneling i.e. how
a particle having a low energy equal to one of the quasistationary energies of the nucleus can
easily penetrate the barrier. In 1930's and 1940's there were many attempts to relate the dynamics
of the electron current in a system of metal-semiconductor which was used in rectifying the
current, to the tunneling of electrons in solids. But the models were not realistic enough and
usually quantum theory was predicting a current in the opposite direction of the observed
current. With the discovery of transistors in 1947, the tunneling of electrons received renewed
attention. In 1950 the construction of semiconductors like Ge and Si had advanced to a point was
it was possible to manufacture semiconductors of given characteristics.

In 1957 L. Esaki discovered tunnel diode and this discovery proved the electron tunneling in
solids conclusively. Three years later i.e. in 1960, I. Giaever observed that if one or both of the
metals are superconducting then the voltage-current curve provides interesting information
regarding the state of superconductor (s). This experiment of Giaever was sufficiently accurate
that it enabled one to measure the energy gap in superconductors. This gap appears when
electrons form Cooper pairs, and the gap plays an essential role in the BCS theory of
superconductivity. The other major discovery was the theoretical work of B.D. Josephson in
1962 in connection with the tunneling between two superconductors separated by a thin layer of
insulating oxide which serves as the barrier. Taking all of this as a single system, Josephson was
able to predict the existence of a second current, i.e. the supercurrent in addition to the current
found by Giaever, and this he showed is due to the tunneling of electrons in pairs.

Mathematical Discussion of Quantum Tunneling

The wave function of a particle summarises everything that can be known about
a physical system. Therefore, problems in quantum mechanics center on the analysis of the wave
function for a system. Using mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics, such as
the Schrödinger equation, the wave function can be solved. The absolute value of this
wavefunction to the power of 2 is directly related to the probability density of the particle's
position, which describes the probability that the particle is at any given place. In the limit of
large barriers, the probability of tunneling decreases for taller and wider barriers. For simple
tunneling-barrier models, such as the rectangular barrier, an analytic solution exists. Problems in
real life often do not have one, so "semiclassical" or "quasiclassical" methods have been
developed to give approximate solutions to these problems, like the WKB approximation.
Probabilities may be derived with arbitrary precision, constrained by computational resources,
via Feynman's path integral method; such precision is seldom required in engineering practice.

The following subsections discuss the mathematical formulations of quantum tunneling.

The Schrödinger equation

The time-independent Schrödinger equation for one particle in one dimension can be
written as

In the discussion of the particle in an infinite potential well, it was observed that the
wave function of a particle of fixed energy E could most naturally be written as a linear
combination of wave functions of the form

representing a wave travelling in the positive x direction, and a corresponding wave travelling in
the opposite direction, so giving rise to a standing wave, this being necessary
in order to satisfy the boundary conditions. This corresponds intuitively to our classical
notion of a particle bouncing back and forth between the walls of the potential well, which
suggests that we adopt the wave function above as being the appropriate wave function for a free
particle of momentum p= hk and energy E = hω. With this in mind, we can
then note that

which can be written, using E = p2/2m = h2k2/2m:

Similarly
which can be written, using E = hω:

We now generalize this to the situation in which there is both a kinetic energy and a
potential energy present, then E = p2/2m + V (x) so that

where Ψ is now the wave function of a particle moving in the presence of a potential V (x).
But if we assume that the results Eq. (6.3) and Eq. (6.5) still apply in this case then we
have

which is the famous time dependent Schrodinger wave equation. It is setting up and
solving this equation, then analyzing the physical contents of its solutions that form the
basis of that branch of quantum mechanics known as wave mechanics.

We have seen what the wave function looks like for a free particle of energy E – one or the other
of the harmonic wave functions – and we have seen what it looks like for the particle in an
infinitely deep potential well though we did not obtain that result by solving the Schrodinger
equation. But in both cases, the time dependence entered into the wave function via a complex
exponential factor exp[-iEt/h]. This suggests that to ‘extract’ this time dependence we guess a
solution to the Schrodinger wave equation of the form

i.e. where the space and the time dependence of the complete wave function are contained in
separate factors1. The idea now is to see if this guess enables us to derive an equation for ψ(x),
the spatial part of the wave function. If we substitute this trial solution into the Schr¨ odinger
wave equation, and make use of the meaning of partial derivatives, we get:

We now see that the factor exp[-iEt/ h] cancels from both sides of the equation, giving us

If we rearrange the terms, we end up with

which is the time independent Schrodinger equation. We note here that the quantity E, which we
have identified as the energy of the particle, is a free parameter in this equation. In other words,
at no stage has any restriction been placed on the possible values for E. Thus, if we want to
determine the wave function for a particle with some specific value of E that is moving in the
presence of a potential V (x), all we have to do is to insert this value of E into the equation with
the appropriate V (x), and solve for the corresponding wave function. In doing so, we find,
perhaps not surprisingly, that for different choices of E we get different solutions for ψ(x). We
can emphasize this fact by writing ψE(x) as the solution associated with a particular value of E.

The WKB approximation

The wave function is expressed as the exponential of a function

is then separated into real and imaginary parts:

where A(x) and B(x) are real-valued functions. Substituting the second equation into the first and
using the fact that the imaginary part needs to be 0 results in:

To solve this equation using the semi classical approximation, each function must be expanded
as a power series in. From the equations, the power series must start with at least an order of to
satisfy the real part of the equation; for a good classical limit starting with the highest power of
Planck's constant possible is preferable, which leads to

And

with the following constraints on the lowest order terms

And

At this point two extreme cases can be considered.

Case 1 If the amplitude varies slowly as compared to the phase and

which corresponds to classical motion. Resolving the next order of expansion yields

If the phase varies slowly as compared to the amplitude, B(x)=0 and

which corresponds to tunnelling. Resolving the next order of the expansion yields

In both cases it is apparent from the denominator that both these approximate solutions are bad
near the classical turning points E=V(x). Away from the potential hill, the particle acts similar to
a free and oscillating wave; beneath the potential hill, the particle undergoes exponential changes
in amplitude. By considering the behaviour at these limits and classical turning points a global
solution can be made. Using this approximation AND using Airy functions as solutions the
global solution can be found. Therefore, the transmission coefficient for a particle tunnelling
through a single potential barrier is

Where x1 and x2 are the two classical turning points for the potential barrier. For a rectangular
barrier, this expression is simplified to:

APPLICATIONS:

Tunneling occurs with barriers of thickness around 1–3 nm and smaller, but is the cause
of some important macroscopic physical phenomena. For instance, tunneling is a source of
current leakage in very-large-scale integration (VLSI) electronics and results in the substantial
power drain and heating effects that plague high-speed and mobile technology; it is considered
the lower limit on how small computer chips can be made. Tunneling is a fundamental technique
used to program the floating gates of flash memory, which is one of the most significant
inventions that have shaped consumer electronics in the last two decades. Some applications are
 Nuclear fusion stars
 Radioactive decay
 Astrochemistry in interstellar clouds
 Quantum biology
 Cold emission
 Tunnel junction
 Quantum dot cellular automata
 Tunnel diode
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