Superluminal tunneling through two successive barriers

We study the phenomenon of one-dimensional non-resonant tunneling through two successive (opaque) potential barriers, separated by an intermediate free region Script R, by analyzing the relevant solutions to the Schroedinger equation. We find that the total traversal time does not depend not only on the barrier widths (the so-called "Hartman effect"), but also on the Script R width: so that the effective velocity in the region Script R, between the two barriers, can be regarded as practically infinite. This agrees with the results known from the corresponding waveguide experiments, which simulated the tunneling experiment herein considered due to the known formal identity between the Schroedinger and the Helmholtz equation