Instantaneous and non-zero tunneling time regimes

We demonstrate how an operator-based theory of quantum time-of-arrival (TOA) reconciles the seemingly conflicting reports on the measured tunneling times. This is done by defining the barrier traversal time as the difference of the expectation values of the corresponding TOA-operators in the presence and absence of the barrier. We show that for an arbitrarily shaped potential barrier, there exists three traversal time regimes corresponding to full-tunneling, partial-tunneling, and \non-tunneling processes, which are determined by the relation between the the support of the incident wavepacket's momentum distribution $\tilde{\psi}(k)$, and shape of the barrier. The full-tunneling process occurs when the support of $\tilde{\psi}(k)$ is below the minimum height of the barrier, resulting to an instantaneous tunneling time. The partial-tunneling process occurs when the support or a segment of the support of $\tilde{\psi}(k)$ lies between the minimum and maximum height of the barrier. For this case, the particle does not "fully" tunnel through the entire barrier system resulting to a non-zero traversal time. The non-tunneling regime occurs when the support of $\tilde{\psi}(k)$ is above the maximum height of the barrier system, leading to a classical above-barrier traversal time. We argue that the zero and non-zero tunneling times measured in different attoclock experiments correspond to the full-tunneling and partial-tunneling processes, respectively.