Penetration into potential barriers in several dimensions

Abstract

It is well known that in regions in which the refractive index varies sufficiently slowly, Schrödinger’s equation can be very simply treated by using its connexion with Hamilton-Jacobi’s differential equation. It is also known that a similar approximation is possible in regions of slowly varying imaginary refractive index (total reflexion). For the latter case the method was developed in papers by Jeffreys (1924), Wentzel (1926), Brillouin (1926) and Kramers (1926). These papers discuss also the behaviour of the wave function in the neighbourhood of the limit between the regions of real and imaginary refractive index. But although the connexion with the Hamilton-Jacobi equation holds in any number of dimensions, this equation can be solved by elementary means only in one dimension (or for problems that can by separation be reduced to one dimension), and for this reason the practical application of the method has so far been limited to one-dimensional or separable problems. In the present paper we discuss the case of more than one dimension and show that certain very simple inequalities may be obtained.