Quantitative Treatment of Atomic Tunneling in the Bulk

Although the overlap-integral (or Franck-Condon) approach gives good qualitative results, getting real quantitative results is much more difficult. One of us (Jim Sethna) worked this out for his p.h.D. Thesis under P.W. Anderson at Princeton. The results can be found in the papers below:

``Phonon Coupling in Tunneling Systems at Zero Temperature: An Instanton Approach,'' James P. Sethna, Phys Rev B 24, 698 (1981)
``Decay Rates of Tunneling Centers Coupled to Phonons:An Instanton Approach,'' James P. Sethna, Phys Rev B 25, 5050 (1982)

Last modified: May 31, 1994

Ard Louis, ardlouis@lassp.cornell.edu