%0 Journal Article %T On a universal photonic tunnelling time %A S. Esposito %J Physics %D 2001 %I arXiv %R 10.1103/PhysRevE.64.026609 %X We consider photonic tunnelling through evanescent regions and obtain general analytic expressions for the transit (phase) time $\tau$ (in the opaque barrier limit) in order to study the recently proposed ``universality'' property according to which $\tau$ is given by the reciprocal of the photon frequency. We consider different physical phenomena (corresponding to performed experiments) and show that such a property is only an approximation. In particular we find that the ``correction'' factor is a constant term for total internal reflection and quarter-wave photonic bandgap, while it is frequency-dependent in the case of undersized waveguide and distributed Bragg reflector. The comparison of our predictions with the experimental results shows quite a good agreement with observations and reveals the range of applicability of the approximated ``universality'' property. %U http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0102020v2