Within a wide class of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic systems, quantum tunneling of magnetization direction is spin-parity dependent: it vanishes for magnetic particles with half-integer spin, but is allowed for integer spin. A coherent-state path integral calculation shows that this topological effect results from interference between tunneling paths.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9208012,
title = {Suppression of tunneling by interference in half-integer--spin particles},
author = {Daniel Loss and David P. DiVincenzo and G. Grinstein},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9208012},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
14 pages (RevTeX), 2 postscript figures available upon request