💼 Case: Consider a spinless particle of charge $q=e$ which is incident from the left upon a one-dimensional electrostatic potential defined by

$$ e\Phi(x)=V(x) =\left \{ \begin{matrix} 0 & \text{for} & x<0 \\ V_0 & \text{for} & x>0 \end{matrix} \right . \qquad \text{with} \quad V_0 >0 $$

1️⃣ For the first region $x<0$

$$ \phi_\text{FR}(x)=\phi_i(x) +\phi_r(x) $$

with $\phi_i(x) = Ae^{ipx/\hbar}$ and $\phi_r (x) = B e^{-ipx/\hbar}$ being the incident and reflected components

2️⃣ For the second region $x>0$

$$ \phi_\text{SR}(x)=\phi_t(x) = Ce^{ip'x/\hbar} $$

🟰 Combining

💎 Conclusion:

  1. If $E_p>V_0 + mc^2$ then $p'$ is real with transmitted current j$_t=2c|C|^2 p'$ which satisfies $j_t=j_i+j_r$ and transmission probability

    $$ T=\frac{j_t}{j_i} =\frac{4pp'}{(p+p')^2}=1-R $$

    as expected from non-relativistic physics

  2. If $V_0-mc^2 <E_p<V_0+mc^2$ then $p'$ is imaginary. In this case $p'=i|p'|$ to give $\phi_t(x)=Ce^{-|p'|x/\hbar}$ and we have exponential decay in the second region with $j_t=0$

  3. If $V_0>E_P+mc^2$ then $p'$ is real. This is weird since it means the kinetic energy is lower than the barrier yet the wave can go through it. This is the Klein paradox. We can calculate the group velocity in region two to be

    $$ \frac{\partial E_p}{\partial p'}=-\frac{c^2 p'}{V_0 - E_p} $$

    For it to travel to the right then $p'<0$ which means $R>1$ and $T<0$ with $R+T=1$ still holding, so a larger negative current inside the barrier.

    Calculating the density inside the barrier we find

    $$ \rho=2(E_0-V_0)|C|^2 $$

    which is negative! The way to interpret this is that the beam is either completely reflected or particle-antiparticle pairs appear with the anti-particles going through

Central potentials