Quantum tunnelling and decoherence in nanomagnets

Official URL: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/112229538/ABSTRACT

Starting from the observation that at very low temperatures an isolated nanomagnet can be treated as an effective two-state system, we introduce a model to study quantum tunnelling and decoherence phenomena. We assume that the total spin of the magnet interacts with a spin bath. We show that depending upon the interaction strengths the molecule can exhibit tunnelling with or without decoherence. We also investigate the case where the spin-spin interaction is mediated by phonons.