Correlated persistent tunneling currents in glasses

Low temperature properties of glasses are derived within a generalized tunn eling model, considering the motion of charged particles on a closed path i n a double-well potential. The presence of a magnetic induction field B vio lates the time reversal invariance due to the Aharonov-Bohm phase, and lead s to flux periodic energy levels. At low temperature, this effect is shown to be strongly enhanced by dipole-dipole and elastic interactions between t unneling systems and becomes measurable. Thus, the recently observed strong sensitivity of the electric permittivity to weak magnetic fields can be ex plained. In addition, super-imposed oscillations as a function of the magne tic field are predicted.