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Cassandra Laffan (claffan)
Jinnah Ali-Clarke (jali-clarke)
= Simulating Quantum Tunneling With OpenMP =
'''Introduction'''
The concept of ''quantum tunneling'' is a subset of the Quantum Mechanics branch of theoretical physics. The core concept of Quantum Mechanics is that on a microscopic level, particles behave strangely, often in counter-intuitive ways. ''Quantum Tunneling'' refers to the phenomenon in which particles pass through barriers if the particles have enough energy and if the barrier is thin enough. In essence, said particles 'ignore' the barrier, continuing on as if nothing were there at all.
[[File:TunnelEffektKling1.png|thumb|Quantum tunnelling through a barrier. The energy of the tunnelled particle is the same but the probability amplitude is decreased.]]
'''Visualizing'''
A good way to contrast quantum tunneling with intuition is to consider the following scenario: picture yourself at the bottom of a large hill. You have a tennis ball that you want to roll up the hill far enough that it rolls down the other side. If you don't give it enough energy to reach the top of the hill, the ball will merely roll back to you.
Now replace the tennis ball with an electron. The electron, intuitively, would require a specific amount of energy needed to surpass a barrier, such as a gap of air. However, quantum mechanics and intuition tend not to occupy the same space! The electron, instead, always has a ''probability'' of passing through the barrier without ever having come in contact with the barrier in the first place. If this happens, the electron's probability will from there on out be lower than it was prior to tunneling through the barrier.