Quantum Tunneling in Half-Integer Spin Systems

Abstract

Motivated by the experimental observations of resonant tunnelings in the systems with half-integer spin, such as V$_{15}$ and Mn$_4$, we study the mechanism of adiabatic change of the magnetization in systems with the time-reversal symmetry. Within the time-reversal symmetric models, effects of several types of perturbations are investigated. Although tunneling between the ground states is suppressed in a simple Kramers doublet, we show that the nonadiabatic transition governed by the Landau-Zener-St\"uckelberg mechanism occurs in many cases due to the additional degeneracy of the ground state. We also found more general cases where LZS mechanism can not be applied directly even the system shows a kind of adiabatic change of the magnetization.