Quantum tunneling without a barrier

TY - JOUR

T1 - Quantum tunneling without a barrier

AU - Weber, Anne

AU - Khokhlova, Margarita

AU - Pisanty, Emilio

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2025 authors. Published by the American Physical Society.

PY - 2025/4/2

Y1 - 2025/4/2

N2 - Tunneling is an iconic concept that captures the peculiarity of quantum dynamics but, despite its ubiquity, questions remain. We focus on strong-field tunneling, which is vital to all attosecond science. We find an unexpected optical tunneling event that happens when the instantaneous electric field vanishes and there is no barrier. This event arises from a color switchover in a strongly polychromatic field. The tunneling without a barrier reveals the disconnect between the standard intuition built on the picture of a quasistatic barrier and the nonadiabatic nature of the process.

AB - Tunneling is an iconic concept that captures the peculiarity of quantum dynamics but, despite its ubiquity, questions remain. We focus on strong-field tunneling, which is vital to all attosecond science. We find an unexpected optical tunneling event that happens when the instantaneous electric field vanishes and there is no barrier. This event arises from a color switchover in a strongly polychromatic field. The tunneling without a barrier reveals the disconnect between the standard intuition built on the picture of a quasistatic barrier and the nonadiabatic nature of the process.

KW - quant-ph

KW - physics.atom-ph

KW - physics.optics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=105001805545&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevA.111.043103

DO - 10.1103/PhysRevA.111.043103

M3 - Article

SN - 1050-2947

VL - 111

JO - Physical Review A

JF - Physical Review A

IS - 4

M1 - 043103

ER -