Speaker: Durmuş Ali Demir
Title: Quantum Tunneling and Entropic Tunneling Time
Date/Time: October 10, 2018 / 13:40 - 14:30
Place: FENS L056
Abstract: Tunneling, transport of particles through classically forbidden regions, is a pure quantum phenomenon. It is the underlying mechanism of various biological, chemical and physical effects (DNA mutations to Nitrogen inversion to the STM). Its only problem is that its duration, the tunneling time, is not possible to calculate within the wave mechanics. This problem has been approached variously in the literature, with largely contradictory and partly superluminal results. In this talk, following a sampling of tunneling-driven processes in different fields, we will voice a statistical approach motivated by the imaginary nature of time in the forbidden region. The resulting time, termed as entropic tunneling time [1], is real and subluminal, and shows good agreement with tunneling time measurements [2] in laser-driven He ionization. It is general enough to apply all smooth potentials, and poses no conceptual difficulty for a possible extension to photon tunneling.
References:
[1] D. Demir and T. Güner, Annals of Physics 386 (2017) 291 [arXiv:1512.04338]
[2] A. Landsmann et. al., Optica 1 (2014) 343 [arXiv:1301.2766]
Bio: Durmuş A. Demir is a physicist at the Izmir Institute of Technology, where he has been since 2003. He has served as Chair of the Physics Department from 2004 to 2010, Dean of the Faculty of Science from 2005 to 2007, and Dean of the Graduate School in part of 2011. Demir received his B. S. in 1991 from METU in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, with a minor in Physics. He received his M.S. in 1993 and Ph. D. in 1995 again from METU in Physics. After then, he has had post-doctoral research positions at the University of Pennsylvania, USA (1996-1997), International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy (1998-2000), and Theoretical Physics Institute (TPI) at the University of Minnesota, USA (2000-2003). He was a von Humboldt visiting scientist to DESY (Hamburg, Germany) in 2008. Demir's research interests include Particle Physics and Quantum Physics. In the former, he has been working on particle phenomenology (in relation to the LHC experiments at CERN) and Higgs quantum stability (via emergent affine gravity). In the latter, he has been working on quantum tunneling time (via polymeric and statistical methods). For him, effective teaching is that which activates curiosity and research tenacity in students. Demir is a recipient of the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. He is a member of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and the Science Academy-İstanbul. He is in the editorial board of the LHEP journal.
Contact: Erdinç Öztürk & Emre Erdem & Öznur Taştan & Emre Özlü