But what if the problem is not with the phenomenon, but with the ontological framing used to interpret it?
This post brings the relational ontology developed in previous entries to bear on the tunnelling experiment, showing how the phenomenon can be re-described without recourse to paradox, collapse, or hidden trajectories. In doing so, it reframes tunnelling not as a traversal through space, but as a reconfiguration of potential under constraint — a relational transformation governed by systemic dynamics.
1. The Classical Framing: Tunnelling as Motion Through a Barrier
In traditional accounts, tunnelling is understood as a situation in which a quantum particle — typically conceived as a substance with insufficient energy to cross a classical barrier — somehow appears on the other side. This "leakage" is attributed to the non-zero amplitude of the wavefunction within the barrier region. The basic picture is of a particle that:
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encounters a potential barrier higher than its kinetic energy,
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enters the barrier with exponential decay of amplitude, and
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emerges beyond it with a reduced probability of detection.
The ontological image behind this is one of objects moving through space, albeit probabilistically. The particle is “in” the barrier, despite not having the energy to be there, and spends some indeterminate “tunnelling time” traversing it.
This picture is intuitively appealing but conceptually incoherent. It assumes that the particle has a well-defined position at all times, yet is also delocalised. It implies that a “barrier” is a kind of spatial wall, yet allows the particle to violate its classical constraints.
2. The Experimental Challenge: Finite Dwell Time, Accelerated Penetration
The Sharoglazova et al. experiment introduces a new twist. By creating a waveguide system in which photons can tunnel both forward into a classically forbidden region and sideways into a second waveguide, the researchers obtained a measurable proxy for the “speed” of tunnelling: the oscillatory build-up of photon density in the second guide.
Their key finding: photons with more negative kinetic energy penetrated the barrier faster. This is consistent with standard quantum predictions, but inconsistent with Bohmian mechanics, which predicts that particles in an infinite barrier should come to rest — implying infinite dwell times.
Thus, the classical metaphor — of particles inside barriers behaving as if slowed or trapped — fails. Something else is happening. But what?
3. The Relational Reframing: Actualisation Under Constraint
A relational ontology dispenses with the notion of particles as entities moving through space. Instead, it treats the system as a field of potential, structured by constraints (e.g. the geometry of the waveguides) and actualised through relational dynamics.
From this standpoint:
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The “photon” is not a substance entering a region, but a coherence pattern within a field of relation.
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The “barrier” is not a wall, but a zone of altered affordance — a region where the potential for coherence is suppressed, but not null.
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The “speed” of tunnelling is not the velocity of a thing, but the rate at which the system reorganises in response to tension and affordance.
In other words, tunnelling reflects the systemic preference for resolving relational tension by exploiting available pathways — even those that seem “forbidden” from a classical perspective. The experiment does not show particles in motion, but the dynamical propagation of coherence across a topologically structured field.
The finding that tunnelling proceeds faster when kinetic energy is more negative makes sense under this interpretation: deeper relational tension creates a steeper gradient of potential resolution, accelerating the redistribution of coherence.
4. The Collapse of Substance-Based Metaphors
The experiment challenges not only Bohmian mechanics, but the entire conceptual apparatus of “particles moving through barriers.” That apparatus depends on metaphors of space, object, and trajectory — all of which break down under close scrutiny.
Relationally, we are not tracking the motion of a particle, but observing the evolution of coherence under constraint. The apparent “location” of the photon is a projection of this evolution — a punctualisation of a more distributed, processual transformation.
The notion of “dwell time” becomes ambiguous: what is dwelling, and where? But the notion of temporal patterning of resolution remains coherent. What the experiment measures is not “how long a particle stays” in a region, but how rapidly the field reconfigures in that region, under experimental conditions that allow us to track it.
5. Rewriting the Question
In this reframing, “tunnelling” ceases to be an inexplicable anomaly. It becomes a paradigm case of systemic adaptation—an expression of how potential resolves when the field is modulated by structured tension.
In the next post, we will consider what this kind of relational framing implies for the broader debate about quantum interpretations — including why substance-based models (like Bohmian mechanics) cannot accommodate these dynamics without contradiction, and how relational alternatives can do so without recourse to hidden variables or multiple universes.
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