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Quantum tunneling between degenerate ground states through the central barrier of a potential is extended to excited states with the instanton method. This extension is achieved with the help of an LSZ reduction technique as in field theory and may be of importance in the study of macroscopic quantum phenomena in magnetic systems.
Starting from the coherent state representation of the evolution operator with the help of the path-integral, we derive a formula for the low-lying levels E = ffl0 Gamma 24ffl cos(s + ,)ss of a quantum spin system. The quenching of macroscopic quantum coherence is understood as the vanishing of cos(s + ,)ss in disagreement with the suppression of tunneling (i.e. 4ffl = 0) as claimed in the literature. A new configuration called the macroscopic Fermi-particle is suggested by the character of its wave function. The tunne- ling rate ( 24fflss ) does not vanish, not for integer spin s nor for a half-integer value of s, and is calculated explicitly (for the position dependent mass) up to the one-loop approximation.