The influence of low to moderate frequency environments on Macroscopic Quantum Tunneling (MQT) in superconducting circuits is studied within the Im-F approach to evaluate tunneling rates. Particular attention is paid to two model environments, namely, a pure sluggish bath and a sluggish bath with additional 1/f-noise. General findings are applied to Zener flip tunneling, a MQT phenomenon recently predicted and observed in a superconducting circuit implementing a quantum bit.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0411633,
title = {Influence of low-frequency noise on macroscopic quantum tunneling in superconducting circuits},
author = {M. Duckheim and J. Ankerhold},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0411633},
year = {2009}
}