In physics, this is the domain of wave mechanics and what happens when waves meet a boundary. So, yeah, it has to be what happens to ocean waves when they do, as long as you can define their intensity mathematically. Depending on the medium and the incident angle, sometimes what are called evanescent waves can penetrate the boundary and "tunnel" through to a second medium. Light does this too, and it's treated classically in optics. Ocean waves just "dump" their energy as sound and a bit of heat, but over time this causes erosion which is definitely not a tunnelling effect. So this tunneling effect--the incident wave intensity is totally reflected, classically the tunnelling wave has zero energy--has a classical and a quantum explanation in the case of light. This effect isn't what happens to light at optical frequencies when it meets a glass lens or a window. Without the total reflection of intensity, optical intensities as electromagnetic waves, are reflected and transmitted at both boundaries of the medium, there are five wave components in the mix. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The lower image is a representation of evanescent waves at a boundary (mit der totalreflektierte). You can consider these as representations of probabilities, there is no wave energy on one side of the boundary, instead the probability of transmission through the medium, left to right, decays exponentially. So my "thought experiment" (not actually mine) about sending photons through a heated aperture should also have evanescent waves, with a probability of detection.
LHS wave patterns appear to be of incident plane waves (I can't decipher German text). Yet there is no sign of reflected waves from boundary creating at least partial standing wave pattern, which is unrealistic. Also, in the case of evanescent waves (lower right), there is zero probability of transmission assuming Brewster angle is exceeded in assumed LHS more dense media - i.e. total internal reflection applies. It would require a third layer of optically relatively dense media close to the interface for finite evanescent coupling to yield net transmission to the right. Finally, what on earth does heating an aperture have to do with those examples? Must fly.
It isn't a photograph, and I realise there are no reflections. The incident beams look very much like they have the same angle at the boundary in both images, so the difference is not due that parameter, perhaps it's the medium. Which is why light can be totally internally reflected from a glass/air boundary, but evanescent waves can tunnel across a glass-air-glass boundary. It's explained by what we think intensity is classically, as being a superposition of amplitudes in fact. The phenomenon has been known as frustrated total internal reflection, but it's the same phenomenon as quantum tunneling through a potential barrier. There's a nice explanation of the superposition of intensities somewhere, as two candles and how the intensity is really because of photon bunching and anti-bunching. Because you have two separate sources, there is interference, hence, there is quantum weirdness.
