Dissipative Landau-Zener Tunneling at Marginal Coupling

Abstract

The Landau-Zener transition in a two level system can be suppressed or enhanced by coupling to an environment, depending on the temperature and the environment spectral function. We consider the marginal spectral function, when the dissipation effects are important for arbitrarily slow motion. Landau-Zener transition rate demonstrates a non-trivial dependence of the on the ``bias'', i. e. on the rate of the two energy levels relative motion. The Landau-Zener transition is fully suppressed for the values of the bias below a threshold bias set by the coupling strength. Above the threshold, the transition rate for zero temperature is found using the instanton method. At finite temperature, the Landau-Zener transition rate has a non-monotonic dependence on the coupling strength, being suppressed at the strong coupling.