DRIVEN TUNNELING WITH DISSIPATION

We study the quantal dynamics of a harmonically driven quartic double well in the presence of dissipation. A master equation for the reduced density operator is derived in the Floquet representation. In the classical limit, this system corresponds to a Duffing oscillator with Ohmic damping. We present numerical results for the transient time evolution and for the stationary sate. The influence of the weak dissipation on interference effects in the context of driven tunnelling is discussed on the basis of these results. We find that the coherent suppression of tunnelling can be stabilized by reservoir-induced noise for a suitably chosen temperature.