Download Quantum Clock of Radioactive Decay

TALK
Quantum Clock of Radioactive Decay
Abstract
Though the concept of quantum tunneling has been with us for decades, the question of how long
a particle needs to traverse a barrier has remained controversial until now. In an attempt to
address this issue, physicists gave rise to several concepts such as the phase, dwell, traversal and
Larmor time. Peres and some others revived the concept of a quantum clock proposed by
Salecker and Wigner and attempts were made to relate the time measured by such a quantum
clock to the dwell time within a region. The dwell time seems to have emerged as an important
definition with applications to physically measured times. After discussing the various time
concepts, their connections with each other and some controversies around them, we shall
demonstrate the use of the dwell time concept to investigate the half lives of radioactive nuclei.
Though the tunneling picture has often been used to evaluate the half lives of nuclei decaying by
nucleon or alpha particle emission, the time scales involved in these processes had never been
investigated. We find that the major bulk of the half-life for alpha-decay of a medium or super
heavy radioactive nucleus is given by the time spent by the alpha dwelling in front of the barrier
before tunneling.
WHO:
Professor Neelima Kelkar, University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia
WHERE: Mathematics Lecture Theater, Department of Mathematics, UWI
WHEN:
3 pm (sharp!) Wednesday 24th November 2010
Prof. Kelkar is a theoretical physicist who has been working in the field of Atomic Physics and
Scattering Processes for over 20 years. Prof. Kelkar will give a seminar and perform research
activity in the framework of the project “Metrics on manifolds inspired by Quantum Gravity”
together with Dr. Davide Batic. Her talk is scheduled on Wednesday 24th November at 3 pm at
the Mathematics Lecture Theater. After the talk Prof. Kelkar will be happy to meet math and
physics students for informal discussions and may be able to tell us more about studying,
researching and lecturing in South America. After the talk Prof. Neelima Kelkar will be happy to
meet math and physics students for informal discussions and may be able to tell us more about
studying, researching and lecturing in South America. Also, if you have any research questions
of your own that you would like to discuss in an informal group setting (no problem too simple!),
this would be the perfect forum.
Contact person: Dr. Davide Batic
[email protected]