The magnetization process as a response to a sweeping magnetic eld in the thermal environment is investigated by using the quantum master equation. In a slow sweeping velocity region where the system shows quasi-adiabatic motion, a magnetic plateau in the magnetization process has been observed in the recent experiment of V 15 [Phys. Rev. Lett. 84 (2000) 3454]. Although the experiment was explained from a view of small capacity of the phonon heat bath, i.e., the phonon bottleneck eect, we found that a magnetic plateau appears almost regardless of the properties of the heat bath in the quasi-adiabatic transition and the appearance of the plateau is quite universal. We call it 'Magnetic Foehn eect'. On the other hand, the magnetic plateau also appears in a fast sweeping velocity region by the Landau{Zener{Stückelberg mechanism which is dierent from the above mechanism in a slow sweeping region, and we study the crossover between them. We also propose an experiment which claries the structure of coupling to the thermal reservoir.KEYWORDS: nonadiabatic transition, magnetic tunneling
x1. IntroductionProperties of quantum dynamics have been studied extensively for nanoscale magnets and also in microscopic system with nanostructure. 1{3) Energy levels as a function of the external eld form many avoided level crossing points. When the eld is swept, the probability of each diabatic state is scattered to other states. Such scattering mechanism is well described by Landau, Zener, and Stükelberg (LZS) mechanism 4{6) where the scattering probability is given as a function of the sweeping velocity and energy gap at the avoided level crossing point. The LZS probability was originally derived for a two-level system. Nevertheless it has been successfully applied to multi-level system to analyze phenomena related to the nonadiabatic transition. 1{3,7{9) However, realistic experiments are always exposed to a thermal environment. Hence the study on the nonadiabatic transition with eects of environment is quite crucial for further understanding of time-dependent phenomena in microscopic systems. For example, in the recent experiments of uniaxial molecular magnets such as Mn 12 and Fe 8 which show a step-wise magnetization process, the dissipative eects cannot be neglected even at very low temperatures.1,2,10) In multilevel systems, the nonadiabatic transitions successively occur at the avoided level crossing points. It was found that in these experiments, the shape of magnetization curve cannot be explained only by the modication of the LZS transition probability. We studied this discrepancy by a quantum master equation and found that even at very low temperatures, the relaxation between levels with the same sign of magnetization easily occurs although it is not allowed in the pure quantum system. 11) As a result of a composite mechanism of nonadiabatic changes of state and a fast relaxation to the ground state, the magnetization process in such molecule magnets shows a step-wise curve which is dierent from the pure quantum cas...