Semiclassical wave packet tunneling in real-time

Abstract

Quantum mechanical real-time tunneling through general scattering potentials is studied in the semiclassical limit. It is shown that the exact path integral of the real-time propagator is dominated in the long time sector by quasi-stationary fluctuations associated with caustics. This leads to an extended semiclassical propagation scheme for wave packet dynamics which accurately describes deep tunneling through static and, for the first time, driven barrier potentials.