Evangelisti M, Luis F, Mettes F L, Sessoli R, de Jongh L J
Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratory, Leiden University, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Phys Rev Lett. 2005 Nov 25;95(22):227206. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.227206. Epub 2005 Nov 23.
Time-dependent specific heat experiments on the molecular nanomagnet Fe8 and the isotopic enriched analogue 57Fe8 are presented. The inclusion of the 57Fe nuclear spins leads to a huge enhancement of the specific heat below 1 K, ascribed to a strong increase in the spin-lattice relaxation rate gamma arising from incoherent, nuclear-spin-mediated magnetic quantum tunneling (MQT) in the ground doublet. Since gamma is found comparable to the expected tunneling rate, the MQT process has to be inelastic. A model for the coupling of the tunneling spins to the lattice is presented. Under transverse field, a crossover from nuclear-spin-mediated to phonon-induced tunneling is observed.
