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Physical Review Letters

Crossover from Thermal Hopping to Quantum Tunneling

Hermann Grabert, Ulrich Weiß

Published Nov 5, 1984• 221 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Consider a macroscopic system rendered unstable by both thermal fluctuation and quantum tunneling. Kramer's classical theory of the rate of decay by thermal activation is extended to lower temperatures where quantum tunneling prevails. By means of a functional-integral approach, a general formula for the decay rate is derived which describes the transition between the high- and low-temperature regimes. The influence of dissipation on the decay rate is emphasized.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.53.1787

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Consider a macroscopic system rendered unstable by both thermal fluctuation and quantum tunneling. Kramer's classical theory of the rate of decay by thermal activation is extended to lower temperatures where quantum tunneling prevails. By means of a functional-integral approach, a general formula for the decay rate is derived which describes the transition between the high- and low-temperature regimes. The influence of dissipation on the decay rate is emphasized.
This chapter considers one important physical example of that kind, quantum dissipative decay of a metastable state. It demonstrates how to evaluate the quantum decay rate of a metastable state for a quantum particle in the presence of dissipation. In the presence of phase fluctuations, however, such current states become unstable and decay simply because the “particle” can escape from the local potential minimum either by thermal activation or by quantum tunneling. The chapter also considers sufficiently low temperatures in which case the decay is due to quantum tunnelling. Classical process of thermally activated decay of supercurrent in Josephson junctions was first demonstrated in 1974, and the results turned out to be in a good agreement with theoretical predictions. Later experiments allowed to quantitatively verify a number of important theoretical predictions, for example, ones concerning the effect of temperature and damping on the quantum decay rate.
The problem of metastability due to quantum and thermal fluctuations in a weakly damped system is treated within Feynman's influence-functional theory. It is shown that quite generally the nonequilibrium density matrix may be written as a single path integral. For a cubic metastable potential it has the form of a Feynman propagator with a complex Lagrangian containing second-order derivatives in time and terms noninvariant under time reversal. Dissipative tunneling and thermal activation emerge together as different solutions of the associated Lagrange equations. The low-temperature correction to the exponent of the tunneling rate behaves as Tn+1{T}^{n+1}Tn+1 for a spectrum of bath excitations vanishing as ${\ensuremath{\omega}}^{n}$. It is shown, moreover, how this result may be understood in terms of environment-assisted tunneling. Thus the low-temperature behavior of the tunneling rate provides a method to measure the dissipation mechanism in the quantum regime.
The quantum-mechanical version of the Kramers turnover problem is considered. The multidimensional character of the problem is taken into account via transformation to normal modes. This eliminates the coupling to the bath near the barrier top allowing the use of a simple harmonic transmission coefficient for the barrier dynamics. The well dynamics is described by a continuum form of a master equation for the energy in the unstable normal mode. Within first-order perturbation theory, the equations of motion for the stable normal modes have the form of a forced oscillator. The transition probability kernel is found using the known solution for the quantum forced oscillator problem. An expression for the quantum escape rate is derived. It encompasses all previously known limiting results in the thermally activated tunneling regime. The depopulation factor, which accounts for the nonequilibrium energy distribution is evaluated. The quantum transition probability kernel is broader than the classical and is skewed towards lower energies. Interplay between these two effects, together with a positive tunneling contribution, determines the relative magnitude of the quantum rate compared to the classical one. The theory is valid for arbitrary dissipation. Its use is illustrated for the case of a cubic potential with Ohmic (Markovian) dissipation.
Thermal escape out of a metastable well is considered in the weak friction regime, where the bottleneck for decay is energy diffusion, and at lower temperatures, where quantum tunneling becomes relevant. Within a systematic semiclassical formalism an extension of the classical diffusion equation is derived starting from a quantum mechanical master equation. In contrast to previous approaches finite barrier transmission also affects transition probabilities. The decay rate is obtained from the stationary nonequilibrium solution and captures the intimate interplay between thermal and quantum fluctuations above the crossover to the deep quantum regime.