• Tanwa Arpornthip

Articles written in Pramana – Journal of Physics

• Conduction bands in classical periodic potentials

The energy of a quantum particle cannot be determined exactly unless there is an infinite amount of time to perform the measurement. This paper considers the possibility that $\Delta E$, the uncertainty in the energy, may be complex. To understand the effect of a particle having a complex energy, the behaviour of a classical particle in a one-dimensional periodic potential $V(x) = − \cos(x)$ is studied. On the basis of detailed numerical simulations it is shown that if the energy of such a particle is allowed to be complex, the classical motion of the particle can exhibit two qualitatively different behaviours: (i) The particle may hop from classically allowed site to nearest-neighbour classically allowed site in the potential, behaving as if it were a quantum particle in an energy gap and undergoing repeated tunnelling processes or (ii) the particle may behave as a quantum particle in a conduction band and drift at a constant average velocity through the potential as if it were undergoing resonant tunnelling. The classical conduction bands for this potential are determined numerically with high precision.

• # Pramana – Journal of Physics

Current Issue
Volume 92 | Issue 6
June 2019