Spontaneous Emission from Tunneling Two-Level Atoms
Yonathan Japha, Gershon Kurizki · Physical Review Letters · 1996
We put forward a theory of excitation decay in two-level atoms that tunnel through a square potential barrier while spontaneously emitting photons into an effectively one-dimensional mode continuum. The resulting decoherence can exponentially enhance the total tunneling probability. This enhancement is due to atoms whose final kinetic energy is raised above the barrier by the emission of photons detuned below resonance.