Eur. Phys. J. B 46, 433-440 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2005-00264-6

The reflection and transmission group delay times in an asymmetric single quantum barrier

¹ Department of Physics, Shanghai University, 99 Shangda Road, Shanghai 200444, P.R. China
² State Key Laboratory of Transient Optics Technology, Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, Academia Sinica, 322 West Youyi Road, Xi'an 710068, P.R. China

Corresponding authors: ^a xchen@graduate.shu.edu.cn - ^b cfli@staff.shu.edu.cn

Received: 18 January 2005
Revised: 12 May 2005
Published online: 18 August 2005

Abstract

The reflection and transmission group delay times are systematically investigated in an asymmetric single quantum barrier. It is reported that the reflection times in both evanescent and propagating cases can be either negative or positive, depending on the relative height of the potential energies on the two sides of the barrier. In the evanescent case where the energy of incident particles is less than the height of the barrier, the reflection and transmission times in the opaque limit are both independent of the barrier's thickness, showing superluminality. On the other hand, in the propagating case where the energy of incident particles is larger than the height of the barrier, the reflection and transmission times as the periodical function of the barrier's thickness can be greatly enhanced by the transmission resonance. It is also shown that the transmission time and the reflection times for the two propagation directions in the same asymmetric configuration satisfy the reciprocal relation, as consequence of time reversal invariance in quantum mechanics. These phenomena may lead to novel applications in electronic devices.