Abstract
For a quantum-mechanically spread-out particle we investigate a method for determining its arrival time at a specific location. The procedure is based on the emission of a first photon from a two-level system moving into a laser-illuminated region. The resulting temporal distribution is explicitly calculated for the one-dimensional case and compared with axiomatically proposed expressions. As a main result we show that by means of a deconvolution one obtains the well-known quantum-mechanical probability flux of the particle at the location as a limiting distribution.
- Received 18 June 2002
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.66.052104
©2002 American Physical Society