QUANTUM HYSTERESIS AND RESONANT-TUNNELING IN BISTABLE SYSTEMS

The decay rates of damped bistable quantum systems show at low tempera tures multi-resonant behavior as a function of an external bias. These resonances are connected with steps in the response of the double wel l system to strong external forcing and to steps in the hysteresis loo p when the strong forcing is periodic. Both of these phenomena have be en observed in different experiments. We provide a unified theoretical scheme and a streamlined computational analysis for their explanation . (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.