Nonexponential Decay Via Tunneling in Tight-Binding Lattices and the Optical Zeno Effect

2006/09/11 by Stefano Longhi · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Electronic structure #Exponential decay #Exponential function #Lattice (music) #Metastability #Nonlinear Photonic Systems #Open quantum system #Optical lattice #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Zeno effect #Quantum chaos and dynamical systems #Quantum mechanics #Quantum tunnelling #Realization (probability) #Superfluidity #Tight binding #Zeno's paradoxes #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.97.110402

published as S. Longhi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 110402 (2006)

openalex publication_date 2006/09/11 · arxiv created 2006/11/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

An exactly-solvable model for the decay of a metastable state coupled to a semi-infinite, tight-binding lattice, showing large deviations from exponential decay in the strong coupling regime, is presented. An optical realization of the lattice model, based on discrete diffraction in a semi-infinite array of tunneling-coupled optical waveguides, is proposed to test nonexponential decay and for the observation of an optical analog of the quantum Zeno effect.

Citations

• The transmittivity of a Bose–Einstein condensate on a lattice: interference from period doubling and the effect of disorder
• Electron wavepacket propagation in a chain of coupled quantum dots

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