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What Is Quantum Tunneling

Quantum tunneling occurs when a quantum particle, like an electron, has a probability of being able to pass through a potential barrier even if it does not have enough energy to classically surmount it. This is because on the quantum scale, particles can be modeled as waves rather than discrete points, and these probability waves exhibit phenomena like evanescent waves and frustrated total internal reflection that allow a small probability of transmission. The probability of tunneling increases with thinner barriers that allow more of the decaying evanescent wave to persist to the other side.

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72 views

What Is Quantum Tunneling

Quantum tunneling occurs when a quantum particle, like an electron, has a probability of being able to pass through a potential barrier even if it does not have enough energy to classically surmount it. This is because on the quantum scale, particles can be modeled as waves rather than discrete points, and these probability waves exhibit phenomena like evanescent waves and frustrated total internal reflection that allow a small probability of transmission. The probability of tunneling increases with thinner barriers that allow more of the decaying evanescent wave to persist to the other side.

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FUN PHYSICS FOR NEET
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What is Quantum Tunneling, Exactly?

In regular classical physics if you have a ball at the bottom of a hill, if it doesn't get a big enough push to get over the
hill it's kind of just stuck there. Putting this into physics talk, if the ball doesn't have enough kinetic energy to get over
the potential energy of the hill, it'll never get over, like, ever. But of course, in quantum mechanics things aren't so
simple. If we replace the ball with a quantum particle like an electron and the hill with some kind of potential barrier,
even if the electron doesn't have enough kinetic energy to jump the potential barrier, sometimes it can end up on the
other side. This is called quantum tunnelling.  one of the biggest differences between quantum and classical physics is
that quantum physics is probabilistic. Unlike a ball we can't pinpoint exactly where an electron is. This comes from
the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle which says that we can never know the exact position and momentum of an
object. It's not because our measuring devices are too crappy or because we're too slow, it's just something
fundamental about the laws of nature. But not all hope is lost! Maybe we don't know exactly where the electron is!
We can actually model these probabilities with a wave or, more technically, a wave function. This wavy cloud gives
us the probabilities of where the electron is likely to be, so now instead of imagining a particle traveling toward a
barrier, imagine a wave traveling toward a barrier. Now when this wave collides with the barrier, because the electron
doesn't have enough kinetic energy to make it over, it gets reflected. But wait, what about the whole tunneling thing?
Well there's this secret property of waves you probably didn't learn in school. Light is an electromagnetic wave so let's
imagine what happens when we shine a light beam through glass. When we shine a light beam through a piece of
glass, at the boundary where the glass meets the air, the light beam will bend or refract. You may have noticed this
effect if you've ever looked at a straw in your water glass. The visual illusion comes from the bending of light at the
boundary of two different mediums, in this case, air and water. But refraction isn't the only thing that can happen at a
boundary. Light can also get reflected. The amount of light which is reflected and refracted depends on the angle that
the light hits the boundary. All mediums have a certain angle where 100% of the light beam is reflected. This is called
total internal reflection and you may have heard that when this happens 100% of the incident beam goes back into the
reflected beam, but that's not true. These are Maxwell's equations and though they may look innocent they form the
entire foundation of classical electromagnetism. Remember how we said that light is an electromagnetic wave? This
means that the way light behaves in different scenarios can be predicted and modeled by solving Maxwell's equations
now when we solve these equations for the case of total internal reflection we get something very interesting this isn't
that interesting instead of there being an abrupt drop off where the light hits the boundary there's this very quick
exponential drop off. this tiny little drop off wave here this is called an evanescent wave which in my opinion is a very
suitable name the word evanescent means soon passing out of sight memory or existence quickly fading or
disappearing an evanescent wave is pretty much exactly what it sounds like it decays incredibly quickly lasting only a
few wavelengths before vanishing so we can't usually see or detect it but if we place another material sufficiently
close to the boundary of the first sometimes the evanescent wave doesn't decay completely to zero before hitting the
next material so it can then continue to travel onwards this is called frustrated total internal reflection. we're trading
our electron as a probability wave which means that when it gets reflected here in evanescent wave forms at the
boundary if the barrier is thin enough sometimes some of the wave actually makes it through so if some of the wave
makes it through and this wave represents the probability of the location of the electrons then there's some very small
but nonzero probability that our electron is over here even though this probability is tiny because there are usually so
many quantum particles involved in any physical process the effects of Quan tunnelling. scientists still don't know
exactly what a wavefunction is they don't know whether it's purely a mathematical tool we've created to help us
predict things about quantum objects or whether it's a real physical wave but what they do know is that it can be
modeled pretty much perfectly by wave mechanics. particle in a box is the simplest case we use to analyze
Schrodinger's equation but it's actually a particle in an infinite potential well so instead of this being a box look at it as
a well with infinitely high and thick walls in tunneling the barrier needs to be thin enough so that the evanescent wave
doesn't have time to completely decay to zero before reaching the other side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPZLRtyvEqo

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