The question is motivated by a joke-question posted in this forum, but it is serious: How would we calculate the tunneling probability for a multi-particle/multi-atom object with zero net charge?
The treatments of tunneling in the QM textbooks usually make the following implicit assumptions:
- The object is a particle or particle-like
- The object is charged (hence we can define the potential)
I suggest to consider the following cases:
- Toy example: How would we calculate the probability of an atom tunneling out of a closed reservoir?
- Realistic example: How would we calculate probability of an organic molecule tunneling through the cellular membrane?
- Example with realistic numbers: a hydrogen atom encolosed by a metallic sphere.
Clarification
I am looking for a mathematical formulation for such tunneling.
