Time evolution of tunneling and decoherence - art. no. 032113

Decoherence effects associated to the damping of a tunneling two-level syst em are shown to dominate the tunneling probability at short times in strong -coupling regimes in the context of a soluble model. A general decompositio n of tunneling rates in dissipative and unitary parts are implemented. Mast er equation treatments fail to describe the model system correctly when mor e than a single relaxation time is involved.