Resonant optical tunneling effect: Recent progress in modeling and applications

A resonant optical tunneling effect (ROTE) is a special phenomenon that bridges the wave optics and the quantum physics, and has attracted continuous research efforts for many years. This paper aims to summarize the latest progress of the ROTE in theoretical modeling and application studies. As the background, the analogies of photon tunneling and electron tunneling are first discussed using different optical structures and their corresponding quantum configurations. Then, two theoretical models are presented based on the optics interpretation and the quantum interpretation, respectively. Next, the applications of the ROTE are explored for optical switches and refractive index sensors. Finally, brief discussions are presented to distinguish the ROTE from some other similar phenomena.