On Quantum Tunneling of a Singular Potential

Abstract

Singularity of the potential function makes quantum tunneling problem mathematically underdetermined. To circumvent the difficulties it introduced in physics, a potential singularity cutoff is often used, followed by a reverse limit transition, or is a suitable self-adjoint extension of the Hamiltonian along the entire coordinate axis made. However, both of them somehow affect the singular nature of the problem, and so I discuss here how quantum tunneling will behave if the original singular nature of the Schrodinger equation left untuched. To do this, I use the property of the probability density current that the singularities are mutually destroyed in it. It is found that the mildly singular potential has a finite, but unusual tunneling transparency, in particular, a non-zero value at zero energy of incident particle. The tunneling of one dimensional Coulomb potential exhibits infinitely fast and complete oscillation at the zero energy boundary and a suppresion to zero in the high-energy limit. In the more singular region, the tunneling becomes forbidden, theby repeating the well-known result of the regularized counterparts.