Mainz 2026 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 41: Interaction with Strong or Short Laser Pulses II
A 41.6: Talk
Friday, March 6, 2026, 12:30–12:45, N 2
Can the Quantum Supeluminalilty of Tunnel-Ionization be experimentally confirmed? — •Ossama Kullie1 and Igor Ivanov2 — 1Institute for Physics, Department of Mathematics and Natural Science, University of Kassel, Germany. — 2Department of Fundamental and Theoretical Physics, Australian National University, Australia.
The quantum tunneling time remains the subject of heated debate, and one of its most curious features is the faster-than-light tunneling or quantum superluminality (QS). In our tunnel-ionization model presented in previous work [1,2,3], we showed that tunnel-ionization time-delay exhibits a universal behavior, which amounts to determine the barrier time-delay with good agreement with the experimental result and it corresponds to the interaction time. In the present work, we show that the the tunnel-ionization time-delay for H-like atoms with large nuclear charge can be superluminal, which could be validated experimentally using the attoclock scheme. We discuss the QS in detail for the two experimental calibrations of the field strength (adiabatic and nonadiabatic) of the attoclock and support our result with numerical integration of the time-dependent Schrödinger equation [2]. Our result shows that QS is indeed possible, albeit under somewhat extreme conditions [4]. This raises the question of experimental confirmation of QS. [1] O. Kullie, J. Phyis. Commun. 9, 015003, (2025). [2] O. Kullie and I. A. Ivanov, Annals of Physics 464, 169648 (2024). [3] O. Kullie, Phy. Rev. A 92, 052118 (2015). [4] O. Kullie and I. A. Ivanov, the quantum suprluminlality of tunnel-ionization. In preparation.
Keywords: Ultrafast science; tunneling and tunnel ionization time-delay; attosecond physics; Superluminal tunneling; interaction time