Tunneling from a 3-dimensional quantum well in an electric field: an analytic solution

We derive the stationary tunneling solution for charged particles moving in a spherical, 3-dimensional zero-range potential plus a constant electric field. From the analytic expression for the wave function we calculate the distribution of the current inside and outside the vacuum barrier. At low field strengths there is a constant spreading of the tunnel current orthogonal to the direction of the applied field. At intermediate field strengths the exact results for the current distribution behave different from the semiclassical predictions.