Talk:Quantum tunnelling

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No hole?

The intro says

This tunnelling leaves the barrier unaffected (i.e. no hole is created in the barrier)

What can this possibly mean? The potential energy barrier is immaterial: it is a hole! Johnjbarton (talk) 00:17, 7 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Sheep

The intro has a sentence:

"It's as though a sheep on one side of a 100m tall wall suddenly appears on the other side without going round."

I get that this analogy might help get the energy barrier concept across. However, it makes quantum tunneling seems "magical", as in defying physical laws. But QM is the physical law and the fact that the wall stops the sheep is the magical part. In quantum tunneling, the barrier is entirely conceptual, an artifact of our model of the system. Envisioning the barrier as a wall leads to ridiculous questions like "is there a hole in the barrier"?

Are the sheep helpful? Johnjbarton (talk) 15:56, 16 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction to the concept

The section "Introduction to the concept" heads the entire article off in the wrong direction. The following statement is false:

In quantum mechanics, a particle can, with a small probability, tunnel to the other side, thus crossing the barrier.

It is this kind of statement that makes quantum tunneling so puzzling and description of it borderline misinformation.

In quantum mechanics there is no particle on the inside of the barrier. It is not possible to measure a particle then send it through a barrier and find it on the other side. We randomly observe particles outside of system we believe to be meta-stable. The model that predicts this result has a barrier (to provide meta-stability) and probability of observations. That's it. The randomness is what is non-classical.

Someday I will get the energy to get refs and redo this section. Johnjbarton (talk) 01:05, 24 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Energy production

Energy production with picture 120.56.66.245 (talk) 11:39, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

' 120.56.66.245 (talk) 11:40, 3 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]