Expectation value of CTOA operator for double barrier potential

Abstract

We consider the expected time of arrival of an incident wave packet in the presence of a double square barrier. The goal of this work is to determine if the resulting expectation value depends on the barriers’ spacing. It turns out that the time of arrival is independent of the barriers’ spacing only if the support of the incident wave packet is far from the barrier’s edge. This preliminary investigation can be extended to a more general barrier system with the main goal of calculating the barrier-system traversal time. Keywords: Tunneling, traversal time, time operator