Microcausality and Tunneling Times in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory

2025/07/11 by M. Alkhateeb, A. Matzkin, Alkhateeb, Mohammed +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Quantum optics and atomic interactions

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.09066

openalex publication_date 2025/07/11 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

We show, in the framework of a space-time resolved relativistic quantum field theory approach to tunneling, that microcausality precludes superluminal tunneling dynamics. More specifically in this work dealing with Dirac and Klein-Gordon fields, we first prove that microcausality holds for such fields in the presence of a background potential. We then use this result to show that an intervention performed on a localized region of an initial wave packet subsequently scattering on a potential barrier does not result in any effect outside the light cone emanating from that region. We illustrate these results with numerical computations for Dirac fermions and Klein-Gordon bosons.

Citations

• The enhancement of pair production in oscillated overlapped fields
• Instantaneous tunneling of relativistic massive spin-0 particles
• False vacuum decay: an introductory review
• Algebraic Quantum Field Theory -- an introduction

Cited by

• Wave packets, "negative times" and the elephant in the room

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