Quantum tunnelling — when a particle skips through a barrier that classical physics would forbid — happens faster when objects have less energy, find physicists who worked out a way to probe photons during the process.
The counter-intuitive result contributes to a long-standing debate about how to define tunnelling time, for which there is no single description, and how fast the process occurs.
The results also challenge an interpretation of quantum physics known as Bohmian mechanics, which proposes that particles are guided by waves, say the authors, who published their findings in Nature on 2 July1.
“It strikes me as a real experimental tour de force,” says Aephraim Steinberg, a quantum physicist at the University of Toronto in Canada.
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