1209.2307 (Solomon A. Owerre)

Effects of magnetic field on macroscopic quantum tunneling    [PDF]

Solomon A. Owerre

We present a comprehensive study of the effect of a transverse magnetic field on the macroscopic quantum tunneling of two identical coupled particles with dissipation. Two coupled particles of identical masses but opposite charges in the plane, in the presence of a constant transverse external magnetic field and an external potential interacting with a bath of harmonic oscillators are studied. In this case, the problem cannot be mapped to a one-dimensional problem, it strictly remains two-dimensional. We calculate the exact effective action both for the case of linear coupling to the bath and without a linear coupling to the bath using imaginary time path integral and Leggett's prescription at T=0. In the limit of zero magnetic field we recover a two dimensional version of the result found in \cite{em1} for the case of two identical particles. We find that in the limit of weak and strong dissipation, the effective action reduces to a two dimensional version of the Caldeira-Leggett form in terms of the reduced mass and magnetic field. The case of Ohmic dissipation with the motion of the two particles damped by the Ohmic frictional constant $\eta$ is studied in detail.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1209.2307