Incoherent Zener tunneling and its application to molecular magnets

Abstract

We generalize the Landau-Zener theory of coherent tunneling transitions by taking thermal relaxation into account. The evaluation of a new generalized master equation containing a dynamic tunneling rate that includes the interaction between the relevant system and its environment leads to an incoherent Zener transition probability with an exponent that is twice as large as the one of the coherent Zener probability in the limit T -> 0. We apply our results to molecular clusters, in particular to recent measurements of the tunneling transition of spins in Fe8 crystals performed by Wernsdorfer and Sessoli [Science 284, 133 (1999)].

5 pages, 7 EPS figures, REVTeX, minor changes

References in corpus (1)

• Spin Tunneling and Phonon-assisted Relaxation in Mn12-acetate

Cited by in corpus (21)

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• Berry Phase Oscillations of the Kondo Effect in Single-Molecule Magnets
• Quantum phase interference and spin parity in Mn12 single-molecule magnets
• Quantum phase interference (Berry phase) in single-molecule magnets of Mn12
• Spin electric effects in molecular antiferromagnets
• Superradiance from crystals of molecular nanomagnets
• S-mixing and quantum tunneling of the magnetization in molecular nanomagnets
• Kondo effect in single-molecule magnet transistors
• Landau-Zener transitions in qubits controlled by electromagnetic fields
• Landau-Zener tunneling in the presence of weak intermolecular interactions in a crystal of Mn4 single-molecule magnets
• Phonon Bottleneck Effect Leads to Observation of Quantum Tunneling of the Magnetization and Butterfly Hysteresis Loops in (Et4N)3Fe2F9
• Second-order transverse magnetic anisotropy induced by disorders in the single-molecule magnet Mn12
• Quantum dynamics of a nanomagnet in a rotating field
• Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Linewidths and Lineshapes for the Molecular Magnets Fe8 and Mn12
• Nonexponential Relaxation of Magnetization at the Resonant Tunneling Point under a Fluctuating Random Noise
• Berry-phase in a periodically driven single molecule magnet transistor
• Magnetic quantum coherence effect in Ni4 molecular transistors
• More Evidence for a Distribution of Tunnel Splittings in Mn${}_{12}$-acetate
• Counterpart of the Darrieus-Landau instability at a magnetic deflagration front