Beyond the Barrier: Exploring Quantum Tunnelling

How can a particle pass through an energy barrier that classical physics says it cannot cross? This was the starting point for our lunchtime science seminar on 1 October, which brought together ideas from biology, chemistry and physics.

The session introduced quantum tunnelling through the contrast between familiar everyday behaviour and the less intuitive behaviour of particles. A ball without enough energy cannot roll over a hill. At the quantum scale, however, a particle can have a probability of passing through a barrier even when its energy is below the barrier’s height.

The seminar connected this idea to applications across the sciences, including chemical reactions, tunnelling in some enzyme reactions, and scanning tunnelling microscopes, which allow researchers to investigate surfaces at the scale of individual atoms.

Open to students studying any of the three sciences, the session provided an opportunity to step beyond individual subject boundaries and consider how ideas encountered in one course can illuminate questions in another.

Quantum tunnelling diagram: Felix Kling / Д.Ильин, CC0.