Fractal Dimensions in Tunneling Processes and Effects of Environmental Fluctuations

Abstract

We study electron tunneling between two infinte potential square wells connected via an opaque barrier and find that time evolution of the probability of the presence of a Gaussian wave packet, localized initially in one of the wells, shares the fractal behavior of tunneling in a quartic potential, discovered by Dekker (H. Dekker, Phys. Rev.A35, 1825 (1987). However, the fractal dimensions are found to be closer to those of a conventional Weierstrass function than those appropriate to the quasi-Weierstrass behavior of Dekker. It is argued that the usual exponential decay predicted by conventional relaxation processes can be recovered only as an effect of thermal fluctuations.