Dissipative Effect and Tunneling Time.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Advances in Mathematical Physics Volume 2011, Article ID 138358, 13 pages doi:10.1155/2011/138358 Research Article Dissipative Effect and Tunneling Time Samyadeb Bhattacharya and Sisir Roy Physics and Applied Mathematics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute, 203 Barrackpore Trunk Road, Kolkata 700 108, India Correspondence should be addressed to Sisir Roy, sisir@isical.ac.in Received 15 March 2011; Revised 7 June 2011; Accepted 10 June 2011 Academic Editor: Yao-Zhong Zhang Copyright q 2011 S. Bhattacharya and S. Roy. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The quantum Langevin equation has been studied for dissipative system using the approach of Ford et al. Here, we have considered the inverted harmonic oscillator potential and calculated the effect of dissipation on tunneling time, group delay, and the self-interference term. A critical value of the friction coefficient has been determined for which the self-interference term vanishes. This approach sheds new light on understanding the ion transport at nanoscale. 1. Introduction Caldeira and Laggett 1 started a systematic investigation of the quantum dissipative system and quantum tunneling in dissipative media. After that influential work, many authors have discussed the dissipative tunneling in numerous papers but not with profound illustration in the aspect of tunneling time. In fact, the proper definition of tunneling time has been debated for decades and it is yet to have definite answer 2. Hauge and Støveng 3 mentioned seven different definitions of tunneling time of which the dwell time and the phase time or group d