Biography
Biography: Günter Nimtz
Abstract
These days the tunneling process is for instance applied in fiber optic communications and even in cars as windscreen wiper. Tunneling is a universal process in all fields. One property of tunneling is of special interest: the time the wave packet spends inside the barrier. Recent investigations have been carried out in electromagnetic and elastic fields. The tunneling and barrier interaction times of neutrons have been previously studied. Here we show that the neutron interaction time with barriers corresponds to the universal tunneling time of wave mechanics, which was formerly observed with elastic, electromagnetic, and electron waves. The universal tunneling time seems to also hold for neutrons. Such an adequate general wave mechanical behavior was conjectured by Brillouin. Remarkably, wave mechanical effects and even virtual particles hold from the microcosmos up to the macrocosm.