Landau-Zener transition in a continuously measured single-molecule spin transistor

Abstract

We monitor the Landau-Zener dynamics of a single-ion magnet in a spin-transistor geometry. For increasing field-sweep rates, the spin reversal probability shows increasing deviations from that of a closed system. In the low-conductance limit, such deviations are shown to result from a dephasing process. In particular, the observed behaviors are succesfully simulated by means of an adiabatic master equation, with time averaged dephasing (Lindblad) operators. The time average is tentatively interpeted in terms of the finite time resolution of the continuous measurement.