QUANTUM TUNNELING IN MULTIWELL POTENTIALS

Tunneling phenomena occurring in potentials with several minima are di scussed using a generalization of Landau's approach. In particular, th e strong influence of the shape of the potential on the tunneling prob abilities (resonances) and on the shape of a time-dependent wave packe t (coherence) is shown for the case of the asymetric double square-wel l potential. Finally, these features are illustrated for more realisti c potentials by numerically solving the time-dependent Schrodinger equ ation in one and two dimensions.