Optics (communication arising): mechanism for 'superluminal' tunnelling.

In their discussion of a mechanism that I proposed to explain the apparent superluminal (that is, faster than light) tunnelling of light pulses observed in photonic barrier experiments, Büttiker and Washburn used an old 'reshaping' argument that is at variance with my model and is not supported by the bulk of the experimental tunnelling evidence. The mechanism I proposed agrees with experiment and resolves a long-standing paradox - namely, the lack of dependence of tunnelling time on barrier length for thick barriers (the Hartman effect).